by Aziah Siid
For students in California, preparing for the annual Standardized Testing and Reporting Program begins as early as second grade. In New York, the goal for thousands is to pass the Regents Exam to advance to the next grade. Across the country, students — up to their senior year — are often focused on one thing: passing their state-mandated tests.
As experts continue to explore ways to reduce learning loss and improve reading levels, questions arise: How effective are standardized tests for students? How beneficial have these mandatory exams been for those struggling with regular classroom content?
And then in June, New York state education officials proposed no longer requiring the Regents exams for high school graduation. The change will allow students to show their level of comprehension through work or service-based learning experiences, career and technical education courses, college-credit earning programs, involvement in the arts, or traditional high school courses.
While schools could still administer the tests, the announcement also reignited the conversation about students opting out of high-stakes testing.
The opt-out movement, in which parents choose to have their children skip standardized tests, is more than a decade old. Advocates say efforts should be focused on improving teaching and learning, not teaching to the test.
Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, believes more needs to be done to protect public schools and the programs that genuinely help students.
“There is declining public support for public education and lots of efforts around the country to privatize schooling,” Pallas says. “I think that runs the risk of increasing inequalities because I think that public education has been a strong positive force for providing equitable opportunities.”
Pallas says students, parents, educators, and policymakers “know that school funding matters. There’s plenty of good evidence of that. Funding is related to achievement, and historically marginalized students or Black youth from communities often enroll in schools that don’t have the resources that they need to help these students succeed.”
Testing Isn’t Always Fair
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 made standardized testing the measure of student and school performance. Since then, how students are evaluated has evolved.
In a paper focused on standardized math tests in New Jersey, researchers found when it comes to testing, students from impoverished backgrounds often “encounter barriers that limit their access to life experiences that build background knowledge often found on standardized tests, such as travel, leisure activities, and extracurricular pursuits.”
Black and low-income students are at a disadvantage in terms of resources provided to best prepare when it comes to state testing, but educators also feel the pressure of wanting change.
In a 2023 EdWeek Research Center survey, only one-fourth “of educators said state-mandated tests provide useful information for the teachers.”
Unfortunately, with educators still tackling COVID-19 learning loss, nearly half of the survey respondents “said they feel more pressure now than before the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure students perform well on state tests.”
Improving School Testing Culture
In one step to improving both the public school system, including testing, Pallas says
parents need to be ingrained in what’s happening at their students’ schools.
“I think that everyone should have the opportunity to have a say in how their school systems are organized,” Pallas says. “Trying to ensure that government structure allows for the voices of those who are affected by the schooling, students and their families to be influential in policy making.”
