What would you do in a year without testing?

This week, my home state of Georgia announced that it will seek to waive standardized testing, school ratings, and teacher evaluation scores for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year.  “Given the ongoing challenges presented by the pandemic and the resulting state budget restrictions… we believe schools’ focus should be on remediation, growth, and the safety of students,” explained Governor Brian Kemp and State School Superintendent Richard Woods.  My social media feeds were abuzz with excitement at the news.  Among both parents and fellow educators alike, it seems like there has been a unified response to the announcement.

A year without the pressure of standardized testing will be really nice.

Is that it?
​

​For my entire teaching career, standardized testing has been front and center, and very few teachers or parents I know speak favorably of it.  The list of things I hear regularly about high-stakes testing includes:​

• It isn’t fair to judge students/teachers/schools on test scores
• Tests can’t accurately assess students who have special needs, test anxiety, attention problems, or bad test-taking skills
• Testing results in a bad school experience because it makes teachers feel like they have to “teach to the test”
• Testing is why schools can't do anything fun anymore 
• Standardized tests are biased in favor of certain students and against others
• Standardized testing hasn’t improved schools in the ways it was supposed to 
• Testing is making good teachers leave the profession 

I'm not writing to debate the merits of those statements, but rather to point out that, if you’re an educator or a parent, you’ve probably heard (or said) all of these things  for years.  Now, for the first time in my entire career, students and teachers in Georgia might be looking forward to a year without standardized testing or their resulting teacher/school ratings.  I have to admit, I expected the reaction to be a bit more than

That’ll really be nice.

"It says here that standardized testing is why school can't be fun anymore."

I hope that, behind the re-tweets and Facebook shares of “that’ll be really nice,” bigger dreams exist.  For teachers who have felt constrained to “teach to the test” and for students or educators who have felt unfairly judged or increasingly anxious, I hope that this is an opportunity that isn’t wasted.  Imagine you’d been asked this question in a “normal” school year.  Chances are, you’ve thought about it.

What would you do differently in a year without standardized testing?​

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe we'll spend the year learning remotely.  Maybe just surviving the pandemic-altered school year without the worry of testing is enough.  The Governor and State Superintendent’s recommendation to focus on remediation, growth, and safety is certainly a good one.  Perhaps a year without testing won’t be all that different.

But it could be.

A year without standardized tests may never happen again.  The opportunity to show what school could be like without them may never come again.  And maybe it shouldn’t.  If all we would have to say were standardized testing to disappear was “that would be really nice,” it’ll probably stick around forever.  So I think it is worth some time before school starts again to dream little bigger, just in case.  Personally, I’ll be spending some time thinking about my answer to this question.

Hmmm?  What would I do differently in a year without testing?

What will you do differently in a year without standardized testing?


If you enjoyed this post, please share it!

Want to make sure you never miss a new post?  Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.  ​

Want to read more right now?  You're in luck - you can browse past posts by category:

• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
• Leaning Into The Science and Engineering Practices
• Classroom Practices
• Classroom Stories
• Ideas and Opinions
• Pandemic-Related Issues