Following the spring’s standardized testing season, educators share struggles, frustrations, and challenges.

Teachers share many objections to current standardized testing practices, with an emphasis on the learning time lost to testing. They also feel the test data is not leveraged in a way that can meaningfully improve teaching and learning. 

  • Teachers object to the amount of instructional time dedicated to standardized testing.
    • Teachers question whether requiring young children to take hours-long tests actually yields more useful data than a shorter assessment could: “What justifies making 8-year-old children sit for a four hour test?” and “Why so many days?” Teachers point to the days of instructional time lost to testing.
  • Many teachers don’t see the skills necessary to succeed on standardized tests aligned with the skills needed for mastery of their content area.
    • One says, “There’s often a chasm between a student’s ability to master a skill and being able to show mastery on a standardized test.” 
    • They point out that teaching students how to be good readers and writers “doesn’t always translate to writing for a test” and that students who show brilliant problem solving in math might look at multiple choice tests and have “their eyes glaze over.”
  • Several teachers point out the lack of test passages “centering the language, culture, or experiences of urban Black or Brown youth & their communities” as a form of institutional racism.
  • Teachers express particular exasperation that test scores are not even shared or used in meaningful ways that could justify the tests, making comments like, “I can’t believe my quality as a teacher is so heavily judged by a test score.” Scores are delivered “the next year when corrective action is not possible.”