Houston Republic

The world is undergoing a major test of its resolve and ability to adapt to a pandemic that has disrupted daily life and forced people to consider why they do what they do.

U.S. schools closed their doors this spring, converting to online instruction. While many are planning to resume classroom activities this fall, they may do so with significant changes. One of them is moving away from an overemphasis on testing.

Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment vice president Theresa Trevino said it’s time to review standardized testing and consider its value.

Theresa Trevino

“The pandemic has definitely generated extensive renewed conversations across the state regarding the over-reliance on standardized testing,” Trevino told Houston Republic. “Standardized testing is nothing more than a snapshot of a particular day or series of days in a student’s progress, and rarely provides meaningful data. Moreover, with significant changes in curriculum delivery, either at school or online, it is highly questionable whether a standardized exam even tests the same data students are learning.”

The concept of widespread testing was launched with No Child Left Behind by President George W. Bush in 2002. The concept evolved into the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) under President Barack Obama in 2015, and it has remained in place under President Trump.

But the pandemic has forced educators, parents and communities to reconsider many things, including testing. A Washington Post article by education writer Valerie Strauss makes it clear that after nearly 20 years of trying, U.S. schools are tired of tests.

“Now we are seeing the collapse of the two-decade-old bipartisan consensus among major policymakers that testing was the key lever for holding students, schools and teachers ‘accountable,’” Strauss wrote. “And it is no coincidence that it is happening against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic that forced educational institutions to revamp how they operate.

“States are learning they can live without them, having been given permission by the Department of Education to not give them this past spring. Georgia has already announced its intention to get a waiver for 2020-21 too.”

Trevino said high-stakes tests could actually do more harm than good.

“High stakes have always been a bad idea for students and teachers, but the pandemic exacerbates these problems,” she said. “High stakes are state-imposed requirements that a student must pass a test in order to be promoted to the next grade or graduate. There have been longitudinal nationwide studies proving the imprudence of high stakes.

“In the last decade, the nation went from a majority of states requiring high stakes to only 11 that require high stakes now, including Texas. While TAMSA has supported meaningful testing, TAMSA has advocated for removal of high stakes for the past decade.”

She said there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of evaluating student progress. Trevino said it’s important to determine what a student has learned, not how he or she does on a test.

“The federal ESSA, which replaced NCLB, has in place annual testing and measurement of student achievement with growth measures in place,” she said. “At the federal level, the state-designed assessments are not required to have high stakes, meaning that students are not required to meet a certain score in order to go to the next grade or graduate.”

“These types of tests, while based on state curriculum, have scores that are arbitrarily set once all students take the test. That is what determines a ‘passing’ score. They, like the SAT/ACT, only have a 60-70 percent correlation to completion of a college course with a grade of C. That being said as long as state tests are given based on curriculum, they do not have to have high stakes on the children. Texas adds those stakes."

Trevino added, “Also we could utilize performance-based testing. That method would still be based on the curriculum, but measure how much a student knows. There may be more than one right answer, and even partial credit could be given. For writing, portfolios could be used to see how a student develops their writing over time, as we know this skill is an iterative process. These types of tests are similar to the PISA, the test given internationally.”

Trevino said she sees changes being made. She noted it appears that both the University of Texas and Texas A&M are not using the SAT/ACT and STAAR EOC test scores to determine college entry.

“I think that utilizing a whole student approach, as these colleges are doing to select their classes for the 2021 school year, will be interesting to study and watch,” Trevino said. “I do believe that assessments could be better, as stated above, by utilizing performance-based and portfolio-based methods to determine where students are in their achievement.”