On Leadership: Pandemic offers opportunity to reduce standardized testing

Abstract

For the past 20 years, debates about public education have been dominated by standardized tests, but the emphasis on standardized tests in education rests on a set of false assumptions, explains Joshua Starr. First is the technocratic assumption that collecting the right data will naturally lead to the right kinds of improvements. Second, testing as currently performed assumes that mathematics and English language arts are the most essential domains of knowledge and skill. Starr encourages education leaders to end the practice of requiring standardized tests for every student in every grade and instead use sampling and multiple measures to gauge performance and areas for improvement.