Biden Administration Rightly Holds The Line On Statewide Academic Assessments

The Education Department doubled down late Monday on the importance of data in the national recovery from COVID-19 by making the bold move to stay the course on one of the strongest tools we have in measuring student progress: annual statewide assessments.

The timing of the announcement is interesting given that Miguel Cardona has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate as Education secretary. Yet, there is no doubt that spring state assessment season is quickly approaching and states need clear direction.

I applaud the decisions included in the announcement – waiving accountability requirements and providing flexibility on how assessments are administered – and know that the commitment to collecting statewide data will come as a relief to the many civil rights, education, and business groups that have long considered these assessments as instrumental in addressing educational inequities.

But it’s not just the advocacy groups that feel strongly about the role data should play. Just this week, the National PTA released a poll showing a majority of parents in favor of end-of-year testing. Nearly two-thirds are worried about their child falling behind during pandemic-related school closures and want more information on where their children stand academically.

But what about Cardona? While the full Senate is expected to confirm him later this week, where does he stand? Organizations like mine were pleased that during Cardona’s confirmation hearing, he emphasized how critical assessments are in helping educators and school leaders identify and address long-standing equity and opportunity gaps.

Given the crisis our schools face, Cardona will be forced to hit the ground running.

The federal government and state leaders must still be vigilant under this new flexibility and ensure the continued collection of statewide data as part of their COVID-19 recovery efforts. As aptly stated in the Department’s announcement, “…we need to understand the impact COVID-19 has had on learning and identify what resources and supports students need.”

This sentiment is also carried in a letter signed by 19 civil rights and education organizations, including the National Urban League and UnidosUS. They state, “To understand the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and ensure that this pandemic does not undermine the futures of students across the country, we must collect accurate, objective, and comparable data that speaks to the quality of education in this moment, including data from statewide assessments.”

Last year, as our nation shuttered schools due to the pandemic, the Education Department made the right decision to waive testing.

However, as Khalilah Harris, acting vice president of K-12 Education Policy at the Center for American Progress, recently said, “we are currently in a different moment. Stories in the media and reports on local assessment results show troubling data about the realities of remote schooling: Millions of students are not getting an opportunity to learn. Studies of local test results caution that millions of students who are especially vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 are missing from the data.”

We also know that public support remains strong for ensuring educators and parents have reliable data. In Colorado, for example, a recent poll by Keating Research found that public support for a statewide assessment this spring to understand student learning loss was sky high, with the public supporting the need for a test by a whopping 62% – 25% margin. Similarly, Education Reform Now Advocacy released survey results in November that showed that 51% of parents surveyed in both Georgia and North Carolina and 67% of voters in Arizona supported administering assessments this spring.

In addition, prominent editorial boards from New York Times and the Washington Post have called for assessments to help measure student learning – with the New York Times noting that “given a shortage of testing data for Black, Hispanic and poor children, it could well be that these groups have fared worse in the pandemic than their white more affluent peers.”

This doesn’t mean the scores should be used in all the same ways they were before the pandemic, particularly in school accountability systems. We support the Education Department allowing flexibility in how the results are used this year.

As we seek to move schools beyond the challenges of this unprecedented pandemic, spring statewide assessments will be key in helping educators and parents understand the impact on learning. States like Utah, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Arizona should be applauded for moving forward and administering their statewide assessments this school year. The results will help education leaders know how to target resources to meet the needs of students – no matter their race, income, disability or where they live.