Lori Dira: Standardized testing should be suspended this year
Share this post:
The Pennsylvania Department of Education recently announced that it would allow individual school districts to decide whether to administer PSSA and Keystone Exams this spring, as would be typical, or to postpone these tests until the fall.
While the Biden administration is imploring schools to stick with the usual plan of spring standardized testing, we commend the Department for this flexibility.
Now it is time for citizens and parents to ask their local school districts to suspend standardized testing for the 2020-21 school year.
There are numerous reasons suspending standardized testing is the right thing to do. Here are a few we think are important to consider:
• This school year has been dramatically disrupted: Disruptions include late school year starts, changes in school day schedules, the combination of in-person and remote instruction, disconnects in the curriculum and e-school, the inability to find qualified substitutes, and a rise in the e-school population.
• Rise in student mental health concerns: National data suggests depression, anxiety and a sense of hopelessness in the future are all on the rise; significant differences exist in students’ self-regulation abilities and their abilities to shift between remote and in-person instruction.
• Negative effects on teachers: In some cases, these tests are linked to teacher evaluations and pay. Teachers are already managing the effects of interrupted instruction and in some cases teaching from home while caring and educating their own children.
• Major inequities across families: There is vast diversity in parents’ and primary caregivers’ abilities to monitor and provide supplemental instruction to K-12 students, plus home language differences, diverse home conditions, issues with parent/caregiver work schedules, differences in educational attainment of parents/primary caregivers, and food insecurity in families.
• Major inequities in access to technology: Stable internet connections that are a basic requirement for e-schooling and remote learning are sometimes unavailable.
• Further exacerbations of inequities for K-12 students with disabilities: Individualized instruction is often not as viable in an online format or in a format that has changed multiple times.
Some special interest groups have advocated for standardized testing as a way to reveal achievement gaps so that vulnerable students can obtain support and resources. We believe that this additional testing is not necessary. Inequitable access to education resources is already well documented.
Additionally, school districts collect valuable academic measures on district curriculum assessments that are nationally normed. Teachers give tests, quizzes, homework and written assessments during instruction. These insights into how students are learning should be sufficient to evaluate how to deliver additional interventions to get our state’s learners back on track without additional standardized testing or mere test preparation.
Lori Dira is an associate professor of education at Bucknell University. This op-ed was co-written by Abe Feuerstein, Ramona Fruja, Amy Golightly, Sue Ellen Henry, Allison Lockard, Sarah MacKenzie-Dawson and Janet VanLone.