Could Oklahoma’s waiver end state testing as we know it?

14 Aug Could Oklahoma’s waiver end state testing as we know it?

By Dale Chu

If you only read last week’s press release, you might think Oklahoma had just liberated its students from a tyrannical testing regime. The headline blares: “END of Government Mandated End-of-Year Testing,” complete with vows to “return power back to the states” and give it to parents, plus multiple nods to the Trump administration.

It’s a dramatic flourish, but behind the political theater lies something less glamorous: a waiver request to the U.S. Department of Education to replace federal peer review with a “state-driven review process.” The change wouldn’t end testing outright, but it would sidestep Uncle Sam’s approval process, letting Oklahoma decide which assessments qualify for federal accountability.

Under the proposal, the state would replace its current statewide summative exams in grades 3–8 with district-selected benchmark assessments. It also wants to make the SAT and other measures eligible for accountability without federal vetting.

Oklahoma’s state superintendent sells the move as a victory over bureaucrats and teachers unions. The waiver letter sells it as the modernization of outdated testing practices. What neither dwells on are the practical challenges. Statewide tests, for all their flaws, provide a common yardstick. Every student in a given grade takes the same test, aligned to the same state standards, at the same point in time. That makes it possible to track progress across districts, compare subgroup performance, and identify where resources are needed.

When districts choose their own tests, even with state approval, you lose that clean comparability. Different assessments vary in alignment, rigor, and scoring. Stitching those scores into a single statewide picture is messy work, and the signal can quickly get lost in the noise.

That’s the real tradeoff here. If approved, Oklahoma might gain assessments that feel more instructionally useful to teachers. But they risk losing the ability to credibly measure progress against the state’s own standards, to hold schools accountable in a fair and consistent way, and to tell the public with confidence how students are doing. The final point is especially significant in a state that’s no stranger to assessment controversy.

Will Oklahoma’s waiver pass muster with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her team? The administration’s improvisational, symbolic, and reactionary approach to education policy suggests that they very well could be open to Oklahoma’s bid to upend its assessment system. But if the feds do approve this waiver, the floodgates could be open for other states to follow suit, fracturing the comparability that’s been a hallmark of federal accountability for over two decades. The future of state testing hangs in the balance.