Abstract
In 2020–2021, during the COVID pandemic, the federal government offered states the opportunity to request waivers from federally mandated standardized testing accountability protocols. For this study, we examined the contents of requests submitted by educational leaders from 12 states and the subsequent responses provided by federal government leaders. We applied concepts of framing and frame articulation, political spectacle, and policy paradox to examine how state and federal leaders positioned their views of the role and purpose of statewide accountability systems. Using a mixed-methods design, we found that state and federal leaders stridently disagreed about the role of standardized tests during COVID, with each leveraging frames of civil rights and moral imperatives to justify keeping the test (federal leaders) versus abandoning it (state leaders). Of the 12 waivers submitted, eight were denied, three were considered not needed, and one was granted.
Keywords
Introduction
As the spring of 2020 unfolded, the world experienced an unprecedented (Karaian & June, 2020) set of disruptions due to the novel coronavirus (COVID) pandemic. All forms of daily life were affected as this contagious virus spread, shutting down businesses, keeping us home, and preventing us from physically interacting with one another. Among global institutions, and for this study, United States (U.S.) institutions hit especially hard were education systems whose leaders were forced to make immediate and sharp adjustments in how they functioned. Teachers moved schooling online, causing remarkable shifts in instruction, learning, and subsequent levels of student achievement (e.g., learning loss; see Fahle et al., 2023; Kane & Reardon, 2023; Tan, 2021).
As the pandemic progressed, state education leaders (e.g., state superintendents of education and governors) varied in how they approached the crisis. In typically Democratic-leaning states like Washington and Minnesota, state leaders mandated masks and extended school shutdowns throughout the first year of the pandemic. Other state leaders, in typically Republican-leaning states like Arkansas and Texas, took different approaches, resisting mask mandates and allowing schools to reopen early in the pandemic, or remain open throughout (Jack & Oster, 2023). Concurrently, the federal government (led by a Republican Presidential administration at the start of the crisis and a Democratic Presidential administration as the pandemic persisted and ended) had its own response, conveying to states how federal mandates should be carried out. It was the intersection of these forces (federal and state responses to COVID) that served as the backdrop of this study.
As the pandemic continued, state-level leaders wrestled over how they would handle the federal mandates of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) that required summative achievement testing every year in mathematics and English/language arts (ELA) in grades 3–8 and once in high school. In March 2020, the federal government waived ESSA’s testing and accountability provisions for all states, recognizing the challenges that schools across the U.S. faced in the wake of sending students home. However, during the next academic year (2020–2021), the federal government reinstated the full weight of ESSA, requiring states to return to pre-pandemic routines and administer standardized tests to all students every year.
Acknowledging the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, however, the federal government offered states the opportunity to apply for a waiver from ESSA’s testing mandates for the 2020–2021 academic year. Most states sought relief from some of the requirements, with a much smaller number of states (
Purpose of the Study
In the immediate years following the height of COVID, there were a few key publications where authors weighed in on the pandemic-era waivers and testing mandates. De Voto et al. (2023) explored how school leaders in two districts with different resource levels generally responded to the COVID–19 pandemic. They found that stringent testing policies exacerbated inequities and that districts with more limited resources confronted relatively more challenges when adapting to testing policies. Elsewhere, in a legal analysis of the waiver opportunity presented by the U.S. Government, Lam (2021) argued that the U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, had ample discretion to grant testing waivers under ESSA. Yet, as it was rolled out, there was a lack of clarity and direction for states on how to address “whole child equity”—a key requirement for waiver requests. Lastly, in an editorial written by Bruno and Goldhaber (2021), they discussed how states’ testing waivers revealed states’ related priorities and concerns. Collectively, these discussions helped shape the goals of this study, in which we more fully and empirically examined how state-level education leaders and federal policymakers expressed their perspectives about their educational priorities and concerns as they grappled with federal testing requirements.
Partly informed by these extant discussions, the purpose of this study was to further examine the landscape of federal and state interactions during the COVID pandemic. We did this in two ways. First, we employed quantitative analyses of state demographics and political leanings to determine if patterns existed related to the types of waiver requests that state leaders submitted. Second, and after identifying the 12 states that submitted detailed waiver requests to be relieved from all or most of federally required accountability testing, we engaged in qualitative methods to describe the policy stories (e.g., Stone, 2002) that unfolded from state and federal leaders’ written interactions. Considering decades of federal support for mandatory testing, these exchanges provided a unique opportunity to examine how state and federal policy stakeholders framed the language of accountability, testing, equity, care, and student success.
Federal and State Testing in the U.S
Situating the Study
Since the 1980s, after the 1983 National Commission on Education report
Since the turn of the millennium, this use of standardized tests for holding schools, teachers, and students accountable has been manifested through three major policy episodes, two of which were propagated by U.S. federal policies. First, the U.S. federal government passed
NCLB marked the first time such test-based accountability policies were federally mandated, with consequences attached to test-based outcomes if states were to continue to receive federal education funding. States varied widely in the consequences they imposed (Collins & Amrein-Beardsley, 2014), as also related to states’ political Democratic or Republican leanings. The latter set of states attached relatively stronger consequences to students’ test scores than the former set of states, as also related to states’ general alignments with NCLB’s more general emphases on accountability-centered, performance-based, and market-driven reforms (e.g., school choice, charter schools). For more on this, please see Chubb and Moe (2007); Hamilton et al. (2008); and Klein (2015).
As states’ NCLB-inspired policies and practices unfolded, the U.S. began to realize a range of positive (i.e., intended) consequences, which were used to praise NCLB, but also negative (i.e., unintended) consequences, which brought into doubt the NCLB’s effectiveness. On the positive side, many argued that high-stakes testing accountability improved achievement scores, at least moderately, promoted greater accountability, improved data collection and transparency, increased attention toward closing the still-persistent achievement gap, increased focus on curricula in core subject areas (also seen as a weakness, by some; see more next), increased per-pupil spending, and enhanced students’ behavioral engagement (e.g., attendance, on-task behaviors, classroom involvement). See, for example, Ballou and Springer (2017), Bonilla and Dee (2018); Dee and Jacob (2011); Gershenson (2016); Grissom et al. (2014); Harris et al. (2023); Holbein and Ladd (2017); and Whitney and Candelaria (2017).
In contrast, NCLB’s negative consequences included overemphasis on testing and memorization instead of critical thinking, narrowing of curricula by reducing instructional time for non-tested subjects, and teaching to the test (some of which are also seen as a strength by some; as noted prior), as well as increased tendencies toward cheating, greater signs of educational triage (e.g., prioritizing attention toward students nearest to proficiency levels, also known as
The second major policy push that relied on testing as a centerpiece of federal legislation came in the form of the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) and the federal government’s subsequent
ESSA constituted yet another revision of ESEA; however, the large-scale standardized tests mandated by NCLB remained, although ESSA has allowed states more latitude for determining how states might comply with ESSA’s test-based policies and provisions, with some states increasingly using tests as
As noted, standardized test scores have been the centerpiece of several iterations of legislation aimed at reforming public education. The pandemic offered a unique and rare opportunity to examine more recently how federal and state educational policy leaders viewed (and debated) the role, purposes, and value of such testing. These debates during COVID are the center of this study.
Theoretical Frameworks
Deborah Stone (2002) described how
For our analysis, we drew upon theories of framing to help us examine how symbols, language, and narratives were used to define the purpose(s) of testing, articulate stakes in the current context, and mobilize action toward their goals (Edelman, 1988; Nelson & Kinder, 1996; Stone, 2002). By invoking terms like
Stories in Policy Debates
An initial look at our data revealed that a core element of this symbolic framing involved the construction of
In the waiver communications, textual and rhetorical cues revealed how federal and state leaders defined the problem, assigned responsibility, and advanced crisis narratives that eclipsed empirical evidence and earlier accountability commitments. Because policy stories intensify during an unfolding crisis, such as the COVID–19 pandemic, these stories can become even more potent (Hall Jamieson & Waldman, 2003). As such, we use the term
Framing Contests in Policy Stories
Policy stories utilize different frames to highlight specific dimensions, such as civil rights, local autonomy, or system integrity (e.g., Edelman, 1988, 2001; Itkonen, 2007; Nelson & Kinder, 1996). These frames are dynamic sites where actors strategically adapt or amplify cultural values or beliefs to elevate versions of a problem. In what Dodge and Metze (2024) call
In line with social movement scholarship, policy actors engage in these framing contests through
Political Spectacles
Stories and frames illuminate how problems are defined;
Specific to this study, onstage, the public experienced the
Integrating framing contests (Dodge & Metze, 2024) and frame amplifications (Benford & Snow, 2000) with the illusion of democratic participation (Edelman, 1988) prompted our analysis of waiver exchanges that went beyond surface-level rhetoric. By tracing frames, we describe how particular stories gained salience during the COVID–19 pandemic, thus shaping debates over the role of federal authority and the boundaries of state autonomy, and illustrating
Study Objectives
Informed by these lenses, our study objectives were twofold. First, we wanted to understand the demographic and political leanings of all 50 states and Washington, DC, and how that related to their waiver request contents and goals. Second, we wanted to analyze and better understand the stories and frames leaders used in the waiver request exchanges between 11 states and Washington, DC (hereafter referred to as a state for simplicity) and the U.S. federal government (i.e., the USDOE). Drawing on our theoretical frameworks we examined not only the content of the waiver requests submitted by these 12 state leaders seeking release from ESSA’s test-based protocols, but also how state leaders navigated
Accordingly, we organized this study using the following two research questions (RQs): (1)
Methods
Design and Sample
We used a sequential mixed-methods exploratory design in which our quantitative data collection and analysis approaches helped to inform our subsequent and more heavily weighted qualitative data collection and analysis approaches (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2010). Quantitative data included all 50 states’ and Washington, DC’s publicly available demographic information. For our qualitative data, we collected all waiver requests submitted for our analytical sample of the 12 states that submitted waivers from all accountability mandates. Consequently, the bulk of our qualitative analyses focused on the exchanges between the leaders of these 12 states and federal policymakers.
We conceptualized the study as a single case study with multiple embedded units of analysis (Yin, 2009). While we bounded this case through 2021, we limited subunits to July 2020 through April 2021 (i.e., USDOE’s initial letter to states about waivers through states’ waiver requests and USDOE’s final responses). We examined each state’s exchanges with the USDOE independently and then collectively.
Data Collection
We collected data in two iterative phases organized by our two research questions. For the quantitative component, we collected publicly available demographic data per state and indicators capturing states’ political typologies. Data included the number of students enrolled in states’ K–12 schools; the percentages of children under age 18 living in poverty; the percentages of white, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, American Indian and students reporting two or more races; the percentages of students eligible for free/reduced lunch (FRL); and how citizens of each state voted in the 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections (i.e., Democratic or Republican). 1
For our qualitative component (RQ2), we focused on gathering publicly available documents that illustrated what states submitted via their written ESSA assessment waivers to the USDOE during the 2020–2021 school year. We identified and retrieved all written communications from Washington, DC, and 50 states to the USDOE in response to the USDOE’s waiver call during the 2020–2021 school year. The USDOE’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education maintained a robust archive of communications between its office and states. This database enabled us to identify the 12 states of primary interest in this study, their written communications, and the ultimate outcomes of their exchanges. By examining these high-leverage challenges (i.e., cases in which states explicitly questioned or resisted the federal testing norm), we could observe the most distinctive narratives and rhetorical appeals. The written exchanges included an initial assessment waiver request made in writing from each of the 12 states, the USDOE’s written response to those requests, state leaders’ written responses to the USDOE, and subsequent communications. Some states had a single exchange, where state leaders wrote to the USDOE, and the USDOE responded, while other states had up to three back-and-forth exchanges. Data included, on average, four documents per state, with each document ranging from 2 to 204 pages, depending on the document or state. We analyzed a total of 438 pages across the dataset.
Data Analyses
We organized our analytic strategy around our research questions. For our quantitative work (RQ1), we used publicly available data that we collected to examine potential differences between states that did (
For our qualitative work (RQ2), we employed a three-phased content analysis to iteratively examine themes and patterns within and across the 438 pages of text retrieved from the waivers and communications between state leaders and the USDOE (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Saldaña, 2013). During these analyses, we engaged in a comprehensive and organized reading of the text to identify patterns, intent, and themes. We detail each of these phases, the coding schemes we employed, and how our approach helped us capture the policy narratives, frames, paradoxes, and instances of political spectacle in Appendix A below.
Our iterative coding process revealed several key framing devices and themes that we used to organize our findings. First, we identified four key frames (1) moral imperative, (2) civil rights, (3) system integrity, and (4) local autonomy (Table 1) and then examined how these frames were deployed in ways that
Issue Frame (and Contests) Coding Scheme
Our in-depth iterative coding process led us to consider additional themes that would help us describe exchanges between states and the federal government (Maxwell, 2013). For example, we identified elements of
Across all phases of coding (see Appendix A below), we independently coded the data and then met to identify levels of convergence and divergence to generate higher-level axial codes (Saldaña, 2013). Throughout these axial coding steps, we also authored a codebook and set of analytic memos we used to summarize the key features of the waiver exchanges, highlighting the symbolic language, framing contests, and power and authority dynamics at play. These categories provided an understanding of the strategic amplification of frames and the use of stories to describe who should retain power and authority between and among federal and state actors during this unprecedented time.
Results
States and the Waivers State Leaders Sought
As illustrated in Table 2, virtually all states submitted waivers to be released from general accountability structures (i.e., school report card and improvement requirements,
Overview of State Waiver Requests
Waive accountability, school improvement and school report card requirements.
Waive requirements of participation of students with the most significant cognitive Disabilities.
Waive requirement of state-wide summative assessments to all public elementary and secondary students.
State Demographics
To better understand the contexts of the states for which state leaders submitted assessment waiver requests (RQ1), our quantitative findings demonstrated that Democratic-leaning states were significantly more likely than Republican-leaning states to have submitted assessment waivers. See a list of states by political leaning in Table 3.
States’ Political Leanings by States with (and Without) Waiver Requests
Of note is that of the 12 states for which state leaders submitted assessment waivers, 10 were (and are likely still) Democratic leaning (i.e., 83.3%). This difference was statistically significant at
Related, our regression analysis revealed that the strongest predictor of whether state leaders submitted federal testing waivers (i.e., our dependent variable) was how citizens in each state voted (i.e., Republican or Democratic) in the 2020 presidential election (β = 0.305, 95% CI, R = 0.359). This variable accounted for 12.9% of the variance in our regression model.
Otherwise, states’ waivers were not statistically significant when correlated with all other state-level demographic variables that we collected and analyzed. One variable was statistically significant, albeit using a higher
Assessment Waiver Requests
We compiled all the communications and documentation associated with our 12 states for which leaders submitted requests for full waivers from statewide testing (see Table 4) to answer RQ2. Our analysis of these documents revealed that virtually every state’s letter author(s) followed a narrative arc (e.g., Stone, 1997), where they began with a statement acknowledging the importance of summative assessments, typically followed by a statement regarding the challenges or contexts of education during COVID. Once the conflict in their narrative arc was revealed, they argued that the unique circumstances surrounding COVID required that they prioritize the values of equity, care, or the socio-emotional well-being of students in their states through their waiver requests. Although state leaders varied in their approaches, all state leaders seemed to follow this basic narrative arc in their requests.
Descriptive Statistics Describing Total Pages of States’ Waiver Requests and Communications with the U.S. Department of Education
Stories of Decline and Control
A defining feature of states’ waiver requests was their dual reliance on
In these analyses, we read many of these explicit statements of commitment to summative assessments as an effort to deep and long-standing commitment to using statewide assessment data to drive student academic achievement, especially for those students most at risk. As [they illustrated], statewide assessment data are used to meet critical needs: to direct resources to students who need them most, to create research on academic outcomes that drive programmatic change to contribute to decision making for families.
While not all states were as direct in their respect for (and in some cases admiration of) their summative assessment data, every state’s letter included such explicit statements illustrating states’ appreciable commitments to testing. Only Michigan authors described their pledge less directly, stating that “in a normal environment, trustworthy summative assessment data can be used to help increase student learning over time.”
Beyond this, all waiver requests included
These same waiver requests also vividly conveyed
The Paradox of Upholding Accountability While Seeking Exemptions
Throughout these exchanges, states repeatedly affirmed their commitment to testing as crucial for equity and transparency, even as they pursued waivers from summative testing. This apparent contradiction, again, reflects a
Framing Contests: Civil Rights, Moral Imperatives, and System Integrity
Across waiver requests and federal responses, most actors presented the problem of the pandemic through three frames: civil rights, moral imperatives, and system integrity. When constructing stories of decline, our analysis revealed how instrumental and expressive discourse (Itkonen, 2007) was employed to frame the values of equity, safety, care, and integrity. These values were used to justify policy stances; however, the framing of these values often led to the justification of opposing policy stances across waiver request communications, even within a single request (Dodge & Metze, 2024; Hawkins & Holden, 2013). State and federal actors strategically amplified specific frames (Benford & Snow, 2000) to construct salient and compelling stories that described how these values would be upheld or threatened if ESSA mandates were reinstated in the 2020–2021 school year (and beyond).
Civil Rights Frame Contests
Many states used a
The first communication from the USDOE to states in September of 2020 that initiated the waiver process, perhaps, encouraged this “data as an imperative for equity” framing. In Betsy DeVos’s letter, she employed expressive language (highlighting moral duty and building emotional resonance) and the same civil rights framing to garner support for reinstating ESSA mandates during a pandemic, writing: school closures this past spring disproportionately affected the most vulnerable students, widening disparities in achievement for low-income students, minority students, and students with disabilities. Almost every student experienced some level of disruption. Moving forward, meeting the needs of all students will require tremendous effort. To be successful, we must use data to guide our decision-making.
In this way, the pandering we identified in states’ stories may have been a response to the USDOE’s frame amplification of equity to mean the need for data to justify reinstating ESSA mandates.
Civil rights framing and the value of equity were also used to justify the need for a waiver of ESSA mandates. State leaders stressed that the pandemic introduced overwhelming logistical burdens and barriers to learning that fell disproportionately on marginalized students. For example, Washington (state) leaders said that their limited resources should be used to “focus on equity, prioritizing the learning needs of students furthest from educational justice.” Michigan’s leaders agreed, writing, “We must adjust how we operationalize our commitment to equity by acknowledging the differences in student access to the resources (technology and otherwise) that are needed to provide an adequate opportunity to learn.” Through this framing of civil rights, state actors argued that equity-focused aims would be better served if resources were allocated to support students in real time, rather than assessing where to distribute resources later.
Taken together, the
Moral Imperative Frame Contests
While civil rights discourses largely invoked testing as an equity measure, states and federal authorities also turned to
In several state waiver requests, leaders emphasized the moral responsibility to protect students and staff amid pandemic-related health risks. For example, Oregon highlighted how “rigorous health and safety requirements. . .reduce the number of students who can participate in state assessments at the same time,” using instrumental discourse to demonstrate the ethical tension between safely accommodating students and meeting federal mandates. New York’s waiver highlighted their Board of Regents Chancellor’s comment in support of the request: “throughout the pandemic, the Board’s priority has been the physical and mental health, safety, and well-being of the children and adults in our schools.” An argument framing testing as secondary to the moral obligation of safeguarding students’ physical well-being. Georgia warned that schools would be “implementing intensive protocols to ensure the safety of their students and staff,” indicating the practical strain testing could introduce.
Meanwhile, the USDOE also deployed a safety-oriented moral frame, though their framing used expressive discourse with a different emphasis. In the first communication to states in the waiver episode, then-Secretary Betsy DeVos urged that: Just as doctors, nurses, police officers, grocery clerks, and other essential workers have demonstrated their resolve, now is our opportunity to show that the same spirit is present in America’s education leaders as we work to safely reopen schools and to successfully educate our nation’s children.
By likening the work of educators to frontline responders, the USDOE framed the reopening of schools as both a civic and moral
In a parallel framing of the moral imperative, care is highlighted as a higher priority than collecting student data. Multiple states urged that mental health services and wrap-around supports be prioritized over high-stakes testing. In California, authors emphasized the need for “mental health services, access to school meal programs, and programs to address pupil trauma.” Meanwhile, Georgia leaders wrote, “Our marker for success should be that our children got through this time healthy, safe, and nurtured.” This same frame was echoed by Michigan’s waiver, insisting, “this is not the time for high-stakes assessment or accountability. This is the time for care, connection, and support.” Such framing blends instrumental discourse with an expressive call for compassion. As such, these state leaders amplified that funneling resources toward socio-emotional care, rather than administering assessments, was the morally sound course of action, coupling practical with ethical appeals for students’ holistic welfare.
The absence of explicit federal language around care or emotional well-being was notable and contrasted with states’ calls to redirect resources to more immediate and compassionate interventions. This divide suggested a
System Integrity Framing Contests
Beyond civil rights and moral imperatives, a third frame of contestation centered around
Many state leaders contended that irregular testing conditions in 2020–2021 would render it impossible to collect accurate and fair results, questioning the logic and validity of conducting summative assessments. For instance, Washington, DC, explained, “statewide assessment results would not be valid for their intended uses, reliable, or comparable, and would misrepresent the academic performance of students.” Michigan agreed: “conditions for summative assessment cannot be met, which means summative test results will not be reliable, comparable, generalizable, or valid.” Montana struck a similar tone, insisting that “testing. . .[could not] reasonably provide technically sound, relevant, and accurate information to the public and parents to support the education processes at the local and state level.” This framing underscored the technical constraints of low participation rates, lack of uniform administration, and insufficient resources, arguing that unreliable and misleading data would actually endanger the integrity of the accountability system.
In contrast, the USDOE framed canceling or reducing annual assessments as undermining the very foundation of accountability. Secretary Betsy DeVos (2020) stated that if testing were halted, “transparency and accountability will soon follow out the door,” framing summative data as crucial for protecting system integrity. A blanket form letter from the USDOE, much later in the process and under the Biden administration, that denied most waiver requests, echoed this framing: While the Department acknowledges the challenges facing all States. . . the assessment, accountability, and reporting elements are central to the purpose of the ESEA in general and to Title I of the ESEA in particular.
In an apparent effort to align with this federal framing, many state leaders publicly endorsed the value of testing even as they requested waivers, a strategy that we, again, labeled pandering. For instance, Georgia conceded that “assessment and accountability have a place in our educational system,” yet critiqued “high-stakes roles” as disconnected from student-centered goals. Oregon described statewide summative assessments as “highly effective. . .as long as foundational conditions are met,” and New Jersey emphasized that they are “critical to the success of accelerating learning.” Despite these nods to federal principles, each state ultimately sought waivers or modifications, reflecting the tension between expressing a commitment to accountability and securing flexibility in the face of pandemic realities.
Overall, these
Local Autonomy Frames and the Waiver Requests
Alongside civil rights, moral imperatives, and system integrity, all state leaders
Partially Complying with ESSA (Shortened or Modified Summative Assessments)
Leaders in California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Washington requested partial waivers that would retain summative tests but adapt them to local realities by shortening exams, sampling fewer students, or adjusting the timing and administration modalities. In doing so, these state leaders framed local autonomy as a needed compromise between federal accountability and state-level constraints, largely through instrumental discourse. Colorado leaders reported that “two out of three [of our] elementary students and three out of four [of our] middle and high school students [were] receiving remote learning,” arguing that uniform federal mandates could not accommodate such widespread virtual instruction.
All state leaders in this category framed their requests by suggesting a compromise of control, noting that they were willing to retain some of the federal government’s ESSA mandates while recognizing federal oversight, but they requested in return that they maintain local control to meet their students’ needs. Washington leaders described a unique testing sampling plan to create a state-level snapshot of student performance across a continuum of grades for all three content areas as well as student groups from across Washington. This snapshot would provide the state-level system the necessary information to support system decisions. This approach would not adversely affect or burden schools or individual students with concerns of administering a large-scale summative assessment in multiple content areas but rather allow [schools and teachers] to focus on the important work of instruction.
Additionally, these state leaders suggested that their proposed ESSA adaptations would provide more resources and flexibility for both schools and districts, if granted. New Jersey leaders operationalized this flexibility by detailing that this waiver [would] enable LEAs [i.e., Local Education Agencies] to concentrate their staffing and scheduling resources on instruction and high-quality, formative assessments expected to provide more immediate and actionable student feedback
That California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Washington leaders were requesting to comply with parts of ESSA’s testing requirements, but not all of them, suggests that they were framing local autonomy to bridge the gap between federal and local control over their educational system
Replacing ESSA Tests with Local Benchmark-Aligned Formative Assessments
Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Delaware, and Oregon leaders argued that district-chosen and benchmark-aligned formative assessments offered more timely and relevant data than full-scale ESSA testing. State actors framed local autonomy as vital for in-the-moment insights, claiming that federal summative data would be neither valid nor actionable amid ongoing disruptions. These state leaders generally used instrumental discourse, such as the idea that local benchmarks provide faster and more actionable feedback. However, they also employed expressive discourse that referenced moral imperatives, stressing the importance of caring for students and communities in real time.
Oregon leaders, for example, emphasized the importance of “adjusting how [they] operationalize[d] [their] commitment to equity by focusing on differences in student access to resources,” indicating a local lens on the pandemic’s uneven impact. Michigan, as quoted earlier, agreed with Oregon and critiqued the springtime utility of ESSA tests, further insisting that “summative assessments could not meet their intended aims” in addressing the ongoing crisis, and thus, local formative measures would better serve instructional decisions.
Collectively, these state leaders went beyond simply requesting
Opting for Portfolios or Screeners Instead of ESSA Tests
A third framing of local autonomy emerged among New York, South Carolina, and Washington, DC, whose leaders proposed using portfolios or pre-/post-screeners instead of ESSA summative assessments. For these states, actors framed local autonomy through instrumental discourse, explaining why more flexible and contextualized methods could yield reliable data, despite limited numbers of students receiving in-person instruction. For example, South Carolina laid out the merits of local autonomy, writing: These familiar solutions (e.g., pre-screeners) provided districts with both a [sic] historical data perspective as well as a continuum of data to reference and compare the status of student learning pre-pandemic to what is currently taking place in every classroom to date. These assessments were also chosen because each one had the capability to offer a virtual platform for administration, yielded valid and reliable data, and accurately tracked progress and identified challenges for all students. Moreover, districts and schools were able to maximize the time needed to comply with the law in an efficient manner because of their familiarity with these assessments and of the results yielded, and no additional training was needed for the teachers.
State actors collectively argued they wanted to provide teachers with actionable student data and more instructional time to meet student needs.
New York highlighted the “uneven effects of the pandemic” on student growth, arguing that portfolios and screeners offered “immediate and actionable” information for guiding instruction. Washington, DC, embraced the same premise but stood out in this group by praising ESSA testing data as critical for “ambitious goals” and “advancing outcomes.” DC’s request also differed in another pivotal aspect from the waiver requests of New York, South Carolina, and every other waiver seeking state. Due to a congressionally driven transparency statute enacted when DC won mayoral control of its schools in 2007 (Public Education Reform Amendment Act, 2007), they were already required to upload interim-assessment results to a citywide dashboard (named LearnDC) so Congress could monitor student progress. With that infrastructure already in place, DC’s waiver pledged to provide district-by-district reports of their proposed pre/post screeners and automatic communication of how ESSA funds would be distributed based on the results. By contrast, New York and South Carolina lacked any statewide platform or legal mandate. DC could operationalize local autonomy overnight, while its peers would first have needed to build the scaffolding.
Besides differences in ability to report out results, each of these states framed local autonomy as indispensable for accommodating students’ academic and socio-emotional realities. By endorsing locally developed tools and measures, these state leaders suggested that districts and classrooms (rather than federal mandates) could best decide how and when to assess progress. As with other frames, these waiver requests also acknowledged ESSA’s principles (e.g., pandering to federal expectations) while ultimately concluding that not complying with ESSA mandates was the only viable way to move forward during a crisis of this scale.
Chronology of Waiver Submissions and Responses
Examining framing contests and amplifications in combination with how the waiver episode unfolded chronologically provides a compelling story of these exchanges (Table 5) and shows that the federal review window had two distinct phases. Secretary DeVos’s September 3, 2020, letter invited states to “submit assessment waivers should circumstances warrant,” but no review rubric was issued until February 22, 2021, when the Biden administration released a streamlined template. As it turned out, in the first phase, seven states (i.e., Georgia, Michigan, Montana, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, and Washington) filed full state testing waivers before the template was introduced. All of these states were (eventually) denied, even Washington, which resubmitted a modified version after the new template was released (thus presumably submitting a more robust application that met federal requirements). After February 22, 2021, phase two began, where six states submitted template-aligned requests (i.e., California, Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, Washington, and Washington, DC), two of which were flat-out denied (i.e., Delaware and Washington). Table 5 summarizes the filing and response dates for all 12 states; the most interesting of which was that Washington, DC, filed
Chronology of State Waiver Submissions and Federal Responses. 2020–2021
Federal Government Response to States
In the end, the federal government responded to all 12 states’ assessment waiver requests in one of three ways: (1) they uniformly denied the request (
USDOE letters to these states were short and formulaic. In fact, these three states received the same letter with their state information filled into default sections. As such, these letters provided very little insight into how USDOE leaders made their decisions about the acceptance or denial of these waivers. Also, while the USDOE’s responses to states were formulaic and ambiguous, the initial letter sent to all states by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, employed expressive discourse to garner support and urgency for reinstating ESSA test accountability. What provided the context of our findings is what DeVos initially wrote to all: Make no mistake. If we fail to assess students, it will have a lasting effect for years to come. Not only will vulnerable students fall behind, but we will be abandoning the important, bipartisan reforms of the past two decades at a critical moment. Opponents of reform, like labor unions, have already begun to call for the permanent elimination of testing. If they succeed in eliminating assessments, transparency and accountability will soon follow.
Here we see DeVos leaning into expressive and symbolic language while amplifying the frame of ESSA testing as the right thing to do, even during the midst of a global pandemic.
The Political Spectacle and Backstage Decision-Making
Secretary DeVos’s September 3, 2020 letter functioned as opening night on what soon became what we viewed as
States answered on the same public stage with lengthy waiver submissions (one over 200 pages) that blended instrumental details with expressive appeals. Several tried to bolster legitimacy by highlighting their results of comment periods or surveys. For example, South Carolina pointed to “over 33,000 public comments” opposing spring testing, while New York reported that “88.5 percent of respondents did not support administering any state assessments.” Although these numbers represented only small fractions of their total school-aged populations (and no sampling frames or response rate data were supplied), they were amplified as evidence that ordinary citizens stood behind the waivers.
Yet the USDOE’s replies were uniform one- or two-page form letters that ignored the tallied voices and arrived with little explanation beyond does not meet requirements. The striking asymmetry between expansive state requests and perfunctory federal response staged what Edelman (1988) calls the
Discussion
The 2020–2021 federal assessment waiver episode offered a rare window into the symbolic underpinnings of U.S. accountability policy. Overall, our data revealed a compelling story of how education leaders leveraged
First, partisan alignment shaped waiver behavior. Second, the waiver correspondence revealed framing contests in which state and federal actors deployed the same civil-rights, moral, and system-integrity rhetoric to justify opposite courses of action. Third, stakeholder voice and federal response diverged sharply, a pattern that becomes even more apparent when the review timeline is overlaid on the correspondence. The sections that follow examine each of our three overarching findings and consider what they imply for future federal-state negotiations over accountability.
Whose Story Matters? Partisanship Breakdown
Our analysis revealed that how states voted in the most recent Presidential election (relative to all elections dating back to 1992) was the strongest predictor of who submitted a full assessment-waiver request, with Democratic leaning states more likely to submit than Republican ones. These data indicate that party affiliation, more than the other demographic characteristics of the states analyzed in this study (albeit correlated), determined which state leaders stepped onto the waiver stage and spoke into the microphone. This confirms Bruno and Goldhaber’s (2021) descriptive observation that state decisions around waivers were politically structured, with Democratic states more willing to press for broad relief. We also build on this observation in two ways.
First, regression analyses explained that states with a more extended history of voting patterns associated with electing Democrats were more likely to seek waivers from testing mandates; ten of the twelve waiver-seeking states had supported the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 1992 (i.e., the last nine presidential elections). Second, regardless of partisanship, the waivers themselves followed a similar narrative arc. Each began with a nod to the value of statewide testing (i.e., what we called
Symmetric Stories, Divergent Remedies: Framing Contests and Amplifications
Once on stage, state and federal actors strategically leveraged frame amplification by calling for values like
Broadly, states told
The USDOE took a different approach by inverting the narrative arc employed by states. Acknowledging disruption, the USDOE positioned federal testing mandates
In a telling policy paradox (Stone, 2002), three overarching frames (
Participation, Power, and the Pandemic Spectacle
Betsy DeVos’s
Timing as Stagecraft
The theatrics of the waiver episode become clearer when the correspondence was read against its timeline, or in this case, the two-act play. In the first act, stretching from DeVos’s invitation on September 3, 2020, to the release of the Biden administration’s waiver template on February 22, 2021, seven states filed full suspension waivers. All were denied. In the second act, after the February 22, 2021, template release, six states filed (or refiled) waiver requests. Of these six, Colorado, New Jersey, and California were told no waiver was necessary. Delaware was denied. Washington, the only state that chose to refile its waiver when the template appeared on stage, was denied a second time. Finally, Washington, DC, secured a full exemption (see more next).
These two acts confirm Lam’s (2021) observation that ESSA’s discretionary language offered too little guidance, forcing states into a guessing game of shifting standards. The record then suggests that while template alignment became the entry ticket, annual statewide testing remained the default norm, and only proposals that matched the template
The Washington, DC, Finale
On April 6, 2021, seven waiver-seeking states received their USDOE decisions, and Washington, DC’s application was both filed and granted. While DC’s waiver story did not differ markedly from that of other states, what distinguished its waiver was the mechanics and timing. An existing statute required DC districts to report interim-assessment data on a public dashboard for the U.S. Congress, providing DC the unique ability to slot pandemic screeners into this existing infrastructure. This operational advantage allowed DC leaders to explain how their proposal of screeners would immediately communicate data and resource allocation decisions to stakeholders. Additionally, DC was the one waiver-seeking state that filed and was granted its waiver on the same day; some states waited months for a response. Although the written archive does not show how reviewers weighted each factor, Washington, DC’s lone and lightning-fast approval stole the final spotlight in this pandemic theater, prompting speculation about a potential backstage pass. Simultaneously, it underscored the need for more precise and transparent waiver criteria, if future crises are to yield much more than another round of spectacle.
Limitations and Implications for Policy and Practice
We note at least two limitations of this study. First, our evidence and findings are limited to a single, unprecedented policy window. The 2020–2021 COVID testing waiver cycle was a specific and unique moment in time when pandemic conditions, partisan politics, and a change of federal administration converged. Second, the qualitative evidence relied on letters, templates, and attachments released by states and the USDOE. This reliance on public correspondence does not include informal negotiations that may have shaped outcomes. As such, our reading of federal decision-making is necessarily inferential.
Even with these limitations, the findings we present herein offer a few key implications for policy and practice that can help actors mitigate future framing contests and political spectacle surrounding accountability debates.
Conclusion
In many ways, the 2020–2021 waiver episode functioned less as a routine bureaucratic procedure and more as political pandemic theatre. Partisan alignment determined who claimed the microphone; competing frames supplied the dialogue; and asymmetrical replies revealed where authority ultimately resided. However, when viewed through the long lens, across four decades of federal policy (i.e.,
Our data reveal how deeply that story is woven into the fabric of U.S. education policy. The pandemic did crack open a fleeting policy window (Kingdon, 2011), but that window closed as soon as the USDOE judged that threats to
As Stone (2002) reminds us, policy stories possess a symbolic resilience that data alone seldom dislodge, an insight echoed by D. C. Berliner and Biddle (1995) and Koretz (1996, 2017), whose critiques of test-based accountability show how grand narratives about standards and equity can outlast a
The stakes are rising. At this writing, we are experiencing unprecedented changes at the federal level aimed at education. Among them is the systematic dismantling of the USDOE itself, as well as many federally supported data systems, many of which are used to help trace the quality of (and equality and equity throughout) the U.S.’s public schools. Additionally, we see many federal leaders arguing that states (not the federal government) should have more
While we do not know the future, it does seem clear that we do
Footnotes
Appendix
Detailed Description of Three-Phase Qualitative Data Analysis
| Phase One | We first employed structural and open coding to rearrange each state’s waiver request communications into smaller pieces (Saldaña, 2013). We constructed structural categories (i.e., setup/background/context, the ask, the plan, the justification, and how teachers and students were described) to help us organize the large amounts of content across waiver requests. We individually coded the data and then met to discuss discrepancies to bring us to agreement across coding decisions. This structural pass helped us “break the text down” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 90) into manageable segments while preserving when and how each request, rationale, or appeal was laid out. During this stage, we also wrote analytic memos noting recurrent themes such as “equity,” “well-being,” or “unprecedented.” These memos narrated our decision-making processes, and decisions informed our subsequent theoretical coding (Saldaña, 2013). |
| Phase Two | In Phase Two, we revisited each excerpt and applied theoretical coding (Saldaña, 2013). While state waiver requests were geared toward obtaining some aspect of relief from federal testing mandates and broadly had a solution-oriented focus, within that context, we differentiated each excerpt (e.g., set-up, ask, justification) as using expressive or instrumental discourse (i.e., Itkonen, 2007). We coded an excerpt as instrumental when its authors’ main argument rested on a concrete policy or logistical objective, such as partial waiver requests or data validity considerations. We coded an excerpt as expressive when a substantial portion of the text centered on emotional appeals or moral considerations, such as teachers’ anxiety or pandemic hardships. During this coding exercise, we also captured a new category in which we collected instances evidencing how states were what we called |
| Phase Three | In Phase 3, we employed axial coding (Saldaña, 2013) to examine how issues were presented across state excerpts and pinpoint how the policy problem was framed, as well as evidence indicating public engagement in the waiver process (i.e., evidence of political spectacle). To do this, we systematically examined ways in which frames overlapped or clashed within, across, and in response to waiver requests. We began by revisiting the analytic memos and excerpts we coded in Phase Two, searching for patterns in how state and federal letter authors framed their arguments around testing waivers. We identified four dominant frames: (1) moral imperative, (2) civil rights, (3) system integrity, and (4) local autonomy. |
Acknowledgements
No Acknowledgements
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Open Practices
Open Practices Statement Forthcoming
Notes
Authors
IMOGEN R. HERRICK is an assistant professor of STEM Education at the University of Kansas; email:
AUDREY AMREIN-BEARDSLEY is a professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University; email:
SHARON NICHOLS is department chair and professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio; email: