Every spring, schools across the country administer summative assessments in the form of standardized state tests to remain in compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). ESSA was signed into law in December of 2015 and requires America’s students to be taught to high academic standards and their progress to be measured through statewide assessments. After school buildings closed and education shifted to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, the U.S. Department of Education waived the federal requirement of statewide testing. Now, even though many schools across the nation have not returned to in-person instruction federal officials said in September that states are expected to resume standardized testing this spring in order to measure and respond to learning loss during the pandemic. Those on the front lines of education, school leaders and teachers, have mixed feelings about standardized testing during a pandemic. As a school leader, I am not in favor of proceeding with the state test, however I understand the case to resume.
Should California’s schools resume state testing?
As stated above, ESSA mandates that states measure student progress of the high academic standards in each state. To remain in compliance with this federal law, we need to test. It is clear that shifting education from in-person instruction to online instruction has affected student achievement, but we currently do not have data to know how much loss of learning there has been. Rachel Maves, deputy superintendent of instruction and measurement for the California Department of Education stated, “ We are coming off a year of very little data, and I feel hopeful that we are starting down the path of collecting some”. According to the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, “nearly 90 percent of parents want information about how school closures affect students. Additionally, 77 percent of parents agree that states should resume administration of statewide summative assessments in math and reading in 2021 to better understand how well schools and students are meeting academic standards in the wake of the pandemic”. She also states that “we fail to assess students, it will have a lasting effect for years to come. Not only will vulnerable students fall behind, but we will be abandoning the important bipartisan reforms of the past two decades at a critical moment”.
In order to remain in compliance with ESSA and the decisions of the U.S. Department of Education, the California Board of Education voted last week to adopt a modified and shortened version of the Smarter Balanced exams. Administrators and teachers are grateful that the usual tests that typically take 8-12 hours will be reduced by approximately 50 percent in each claim. The California Department of Education is also opening the testing window as early as January 12, 2021 to give administrators ample time to plan and test students. The test may be administered in-person for schools that are able to safely offer the exams in-person, or remotely for those in a distance learning model. Currently there are no uniform efforts in California to measure learning loss during the pandemic and advocates of the revised test say standardized data is crucial to address gaps in academic outcomes.
Should California’s schools forgo state testing?
Even with the proposed modifications, as the majority of California schools are still in a distance learning model, I do not think it is appropriate to proceed with the Smarter Balanced exams. Principals, teachers, and students are all facing unique and stressful challenges living through the pandemic and are struggling with online school. School administrators are still working to get students online and showing up to virtual classes. Carl Cohn, former superintendent at San Diego Unified, explains “It seems really smart to deemphasize testing during these extraordinary circumstances. It’s important to get at the issues of opportunity to learn and where resources should go to support kids who have been left behind by the pandemic”. We know our most vulnerable students are falling even further behind and instead of spending time testing them we need to use the time to support and teach them. We have students whose basic needs, such as shelter and regular meals, are not being met. As a school leader I am more concerned about the wellbeing of our students than recording their learning loss data. I’d rather teachers have all the time they can for formative assessment data to inform teaching and work to address those gaps and current standards than administering summative exams. Another point of contention with summative assessments is how the data will be used. We don’t know how reliable the results will be so it will not make sense to use the data in the traditional ways for rating schools. For now, administrators and teachers should not stress about this topic. As Linda Darling-Hammond, California Board of Education President, points out, with a change in administration waivers or other options around spring testing could become available in the coming months. With so many variables, I would rather teachers have resources for formative assessments to inform their teaching and guide learning than worry about how their students will perform on the Smarter Balanced exam.
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