Standardized tests should be used as “a flashlight” on what works in education not as “a hammer” to force outcomes, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during a speech last week.
But federal policies stemming from the two-decade-old No Child Left Behind Act and its successor, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, make it difficult for states to use standardized tests in any other way, policy experts say. And despite changing attitudes, there’s little indication that the nation’s schools will move away from the current form of test-based accountability anytime soon.
“It doesn’t matter what the sentiment is,” said Jack Schneider, an education professor and policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell who is also an advocate for including alternative measures like school climate, teacher ability, and school resources in accountability policies. “The law is structured so that it really isn’t much of a flashlight.”
Cardona did not announce any new testing-related policies or plans for the Education Department in his Jan. 24 speech to educators , so it’s unclear if the agency plans to address concerns about test-based accountability through grants, waivers, or rulemaking. The department hasn’t announced any plans to revise standardized testing policy.
Still, his words reflect ever-changing opinions about standardized tests and what role they should play in evaluating school performance.
“He’s trying to bridge two eras,” Schneider said. “Right now, we are still very much in the era of test-based accountability because that’s the law. He also recognizes that’s not going to persuade very many people for much longer as a mechanism for school improvement.”
The debate over school accountability and standardized testing has been going on for over half a century, said Daniel Koretz, an education professor at Harvard University who has dedicated his research to high-stakes testing.
The original designers of standardized tests envisioned the tests as a way to measure individual students’ performance, not as an aggregate measure of schools’ performance, Koretz said.
They “were adamant that these tests cannot provide a complete measure of what we care about, what our goals of education are,” he said. “They’re necessarily incomplete.”
Despite that original intention, states and the federal government found standardized tests to be an efficient way to determine whether schools were performing to standards. And test proponents have said they’re necessary for ensuring English learners, students with disabilities, students of color, and low-income students don’t fall behind.
The government’s role in using tests to evaluate schools—rather than individual students—was solidified when former President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002.
