Why spending a billion dollars a year on tests is dumb

Americans spend a billion dollars a year (at least) on tests that tell us year in and year out that tell us where the wealthy kids live and where the poor kids live. Those tests don’t tell us what kids learned or if they are even learning.

And don’t get me started on the sudden plethora of tests that claim to monitor progress by testing kids multiple times a year. Developmental growth happens despite the school or the teacher, and when “progress” correlates to a child’s development, a school or a teacher are at risk of thinking they are the cause and repeating whatever they did last year, without a clue if it is the right thing. That makes a school worse, not better.

Worried about “learning loss” or the more “learning gap” that occurred during Covid? Those are marketing gimmicks for those who want to see public education in a negative light or for publishers to sell you tests that let you see them. Every student learns in fits and starts--Covid made a lot more of those than normal, which of course presents a challenge, but treating educators as if we've never seen this before is ridiculous. We have and we know what to do, and while it will require extra resources to do it well given the scale, more testing is a stupid response.

We have incredibly big challenges in public education--which existed before Covid and will exist after it, no matter how much of a marketing tool some would like to make it. We can still predict based on the zip code a child is born in what the rest of their life is likely to look like. We are still in the throes of a pandemic that radically disrupted the educational process, with very different impacts based on those zip codes. We have a lot to do.

And we need to know the answers to some big questions. Who is learning? What are they learning? Who isn’t learning? And whatever the answers, what are the causes that will allow us to learn and do better over time? To shape our schools to better serve students as we inevitably move into the future.

Our century-old obsession with standardized test scores needs to end. They answer not one of the questions related to learning. Standardized testing needs to be returned to the hands of thoughtful researchers who understand the limits in their interpretive range. That never included using tests as a judgment-making tool or as the only data point in the room. Which is, of course, exactly as we use them today. We might as well use x-rays to tell time. We’re that far off course.

Here’s a thought: the next time you go to a school ask those questions I just posed. Who is learning? Etc. But refuse to let test scores into the dialogue (they don’t have anything to do with learning, so you’ll be technically correct in doing so). Ask the teacher for their judgment. Tell them you trust them. And if they can’t answer because their school culture has fallen prey to the testing drug, ask them to get back to you and follow up. You'll empower them and get to the information that is really critical to teaching and learning.

Answering those questions is why every educator got into education, and we have taken that away from them to the detriment of our children. It's time to let teachers teach, let researchers research, treat kids as learners, and schools as learning organizations. And maybe spend some of that billion on something that will actually be good for kids and their schools.