Lorrie A. Shepard is one of the nation’s most eminent assessment experts. In this article in Education Week, she explains that it would be a mistake to resume testing this spring. She is University Distinguished Professor in the research and evaluation methodology program of the school of education at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Shepard writes:

This past spring, the U.S. Department of Education gave states permission to cancel federally mandated state testing and accountability reporting because of pandemic-induced lockdowns. As the new testing season approaches, many advocacy groupsare urging the department to reinstate testing requirements.

As an assessment researcher who has studied both high-stakes statewide tests and very different classroom-assessment processes, I am alarmed when testing advocates claim that test data will automatically serve equity goals. Advocates do not acknowledge any potential harm from testing for the very students in communities of color most traumatized by COVID-19. If the downsides were factored in, I believe most, even all, state tests would be canceled for 2021.

Even under normal circumstances, high-stakes testing has negative consequences. State assessment programs co-opt valuable instructional time, both for weeklong test administration and for test preparation. Accountability pressures often distort curriculum, emphasizing testlike worksheets and focusing only on tested subjects. 

Recent studies of data-driven decisionmaking warn us that test-score interpretations can lead to deficit narratives—blaming children and their families—instead of prompting instructional improvements. High-stakes tests can also lead to stigmatizing labels and ineffective remedial interventions, as documented by decades of research.

Most significantly, teachers report that they and their students experience high degrees of anxiety, even shame, when test scores are publicly reported. These stressors would undoubtedly be heightened when many students will not yet have had the opportunity to learn all of what is covered on state tests. A high proportion of teachers are already feeling burnt-out.

Some advocates, alert to the potential for harm, have argued in favor of testing but without accountability consequences. Clearly it would be unfair to hold schools and teachers accountable for outcomes when students’ learning opportunities have varied because of computer and internet access, home learning circumstances, and absences related to sickness or family disruption.

Others are insisting on accountability for spring 2021, saying that schools and districts had plenty of time this school year to prepare for COVID circumstances. In a recent letter, 10 civil rights, social-justice, disability-rights, and education advocacy organizations urged the Education Department to maintain federally mandated testing requirements so as “to hold districts and states to account.”

That impulse looks very close to blaming educators, who have given so much during the pandemic. It is counterproductive because it potentially demoralizes students and teachers without addressing the grave problems advocates have in mind.

One of the main arguments for testing this spring is to document the extent of learning loss, especially disproportionate losses affecting poor children and communities of color. We are told those data would then be used to allocate additional resources to support students who have fallen the furthest behind...

We already have enough evidence of COVID impacts to warrant federal investments. At the state level, there may not be new monies to allocate because of budget cuts.

Testing advocates should also consider the technical difficulties of testing during a pandemic. Remote testing requires security protocols that would violate privacy laws in some states, and even with such protocols, remote and in-person test results could not be aggregated or compared as if they were equivalent. Bringing all students into schools for testing when some are still learning remotely is unfair.

Consider, too, that the many students who are now absent from remote learning would likely be absent from testing, skewing results compared with previous years. Given the likely inaccuracies in 2021 state test scores, other data sources might be just as good depending on the intended purpose for testing...

Bear in mind that state tests do little to guide instruction for individual students. Knowing which students are below proficient does not tell teachers what skills they have already mastered nor what understandings students still need. Assessments embedded in high-quality curriculum or key assignments are the best way for teachers to gain substantive insights about children’s thinking, plan instruction, and share information with parents.

During the past four years, we have witnessed a dramatic erosion of norms, ethics, and civility, under the reign of a president who prided himself on having no allegiance to any of those requirements of life in a democracy. Norms, ethics, and civility were cast aside as encumbrances, like nuisances.

Nancy Flanagan writes here about the role of these unspoken, assumed practices in our lives. How they are sometimes constraints, sometimes naught but prejudices that we absorbed in our families. She describes the evolution in her own thinking and explains why education is so important is raising our understanding of what is required of us to live in peace with others.

For most of Trump’s term, he failed to appoint enough members to the National Board for Education Sciences, which has not had a quorum to meet since the end of Obama’s term. Suddenly he announced a flurry of names for the board, and the education research world was shocked to see that Trump’s list included no bona fide education researchers.

The board is supposed to advise the director of the Institute for Education Sciences, but Trump’s eight nominees are unqualified to offer much advice.

Science magazine reports:

One month before his term expires, President Donald Trump has revived a moribund federal education research advisory panel by appointing eight members who appear to have no expertise in the subject area.

The National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) provides guidance to the director of the Institute for Education Science (IES), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. But the lack of a quorum on the 15-member presidentially appointed board has prevented it from meeting since the waning days of the Obama administration.

 That lengthy presidential snub of the panel was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to shrink government that resulted in a reduced flow of scientific advice to various federal agencies.  That effort has had a particularly dramatic impact at regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, where the administration dismantled or dramatically reshaped several science advisory panels. For education researchers, a mothballed NBES deprived them of a high-level conduit for using their methodological expertise to help shape federal policies meant to improve education outcomes for all students...

The member with arguably the highest public profile is John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He served in the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush, and authored the so-called “torture memos” that provided the legal justification for the war on terror waged in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks. Yoo has also been vocal in defending Trump’s action during his impeachment and in his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Two other appointees–Michael Anton and Larry Schweikart—have also stridently defended Trump against what they see as existential threats to national security posed by liberal politicians. Anton spent a year at the National Security Council before becoming a regular presence on social media, and Schweikart, who retired in 2016 after 30 years as a history professor at the University of Dayton, is the author of “48 Liberal Lies about American History” and “A Patriot’s History of the United States.”

Some of the others have backgrounds in banking or finance.

Having worked in the first Bush administration in the research area, let me say that I take exception to the use of “science” in the large and diffuse field of education. Much of what is appropriately studied is qualitative, not quantitative. The effort during the second Bush administration to turn the Office of Educational Research into the Institute of Educational Sciences was pretentious, in my view.

Be that as it may, the advisory board to the National Center for Education Statistics included many of the best qualified education researchers in the nation. The director could justly turn to the board for sound advice about education policy and the needs of the field.

My hunch is that these eight people appointed by Trump think they will have an important role in deciding the nation’s education policies. They won’t. They will sit through sessions that are technical in nature and listen to presentations about research priorities. These presentations, for the uninitiated, are likely to bore them. I suspect that many will quit before their terms expire.