Assessment headline blitz

13 Aug Assessment headline blitz

By Dale Chu

There’s less than ninety days before voters head to the polls, but no shortage of assessment headlines worth flagging. Let’s go:

States have started releasing 2024 state results: Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and Missouri have issued their most recent assessment data. Overall, the scores are a mixed bag, but kudos are in order for those that publish their results sooner rather than later.

Kansas City area school districts move away from Missouri’s standardized testing: Last year, 20 school districts in the Show Me State asked for permission to show state testing the door. Earlier this month, 17 additional districts were blessed by state officials to do the same. We’ve been watching Missouri’s effort to eventually abandon its annual assessment regime, but questions remain about whether it will pass muster with the feds.

Massachusetts’ broiling anti-testing sentiment is on the ballot: All eyes in the Bay State are on “Question 2,” a union-backed ballot initiative that would nix the state’s test as a high school graduation requirement—further eroding the foundations of education reform in Massachusetts dating back to the mid-nineties. The state’s teachers’ union smells blood in the water.

The head of the nation’s second largest union calls for overhauling federal standardized testing requirements: Yes, and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But it’s still worth noting that at the union’s annual confab in Houston last month, AFT’s president made clear in no uncertain terms that one of her organization’s top priorities in a potential Harris administration will be the elimination of state testing as currently required under federal law.

Walz-ing by Covid-era assessment data: In a recently unearthed interview from 2022, Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz downplayed the importance of standardized tests. Specifically, Walz pointed to the high number of students who opt-ed out as an intervening factor. While it’s true that this can distort results, the overall opt-out numbers remain relatively low in Minnesota. If anything, state officials should do more to discourage students from bypassing the test and focus their energies on raising academic performance rather than scapegoating the exams themselves.