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...
By Dale Chu From Missouri to Texas to Illinois, state leaders are debating the nuts and bolts of annual assessments. Whether it’s recalibrating score reports, lowering proficiency bars, or scrapping tests entirely, the constant is that state testing policy remains under pressure. Missouri adds a “grade-level” mark...
By Dale Chu and Lindsay Fryer You’d be forgiven for missing it, buried as it is in the weeds of the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request. But tucked into the document is something we haven’t seen from Washington in years: a clear, affirmative statement...
By Dale Chu As a former member of the Naperville District 203 Board of Education, Kristin Fitzgerald spent over a decade working on the front lines of education, advocating for policies that address achievement gaps. Her tenure on the board—where she helped drive key decisions about...
By Dale Chu Don’t look now, but Texas and Oklahoma are turning heads with their latest moves on assessment. Texas is poised to overhaul its assessment and accountability system—and not all of the changes are for the better. House Bill 4, which has already cleared the Texas...
By Dale Chu The post-NCLB push to broaden how we judge school quality is well-intentioned—and overdue in some respects. Headlines like the one from a recent op-ed in The 74, “Beyond Test Scores: 186 Innovative Educators on How to Know a School Is Good” reflect a...
By Dale Chu The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is shrinking. Due to budget constraints and shifting priorities, the federal government is scaling back the Nation’s Report Card. Upcoming assessments in science, writing, and U.S. history are being canceled or limited to fewer grade levels....
By Dale Chu Standardized testing season typically brings reminders about sleep and snacks—not culture war disclaimers. But a recent message to families from my daughter’s Colorado charter school, sent ahead of this month’s fourth-grade social studies test, took a very different tack. Rather than a straightforward update...
By: Dale Chu March is here, and with it comes the return of March Mathness—a time to spotlight state-led efforts to improve math achievement. While the tournament gives us plenty to cheer about (just ask my colleagues and erstwhile math judges Jocelyn Pickford and Chad Aldeman),...
By Dale Chu Virginia’s latest bid to raise academic standards took center stage at last month’s state board of education meeting, where policymakers debated the future of the state’s proficiency benchmarks. At the heart of this discussion is Virginia’s “honesty gap”—the misleadingly high proficiency rates reported...