It is past time to rethink and resist standardized testing

April 18, 2021 | By Life LeGeros and Alysia Backman

Do standardized tests match your strengths as a learner? 

If you answer NO, you are in the majority. There are so many students in our community for whom standardized tests make them feel unnecessarily demeaned, dumb, or alienated from school. 

By the Vermont Agency of Education’s (AOE’s) own definition these tests are inequitable and racially biased. “Assessment without a lens of equity, privileges and validates only certain types of learning and evidence of learning, invalidating multiple means of demonstration and reinforcing the false assumption that certain students cannot achieve.” 

Standardized tests measure narrow versions of math and literacy in ways that do not allow most of our children to show what they know and can do, such as students who prefer hands-on learning, students with disabilities, students who prefer to collaborate, students from historically marginalized communities, and students who excel in the creative arts.

These tests threaten to directly harm our children’s understanding of themselves and learning. Even students who do well on these tests get the wrong message about the types of intelligence we value and the importance of every person feeling like they belong and can fully contribute to our community. 

With this in mind, it is hard to believe but the state of Vermont is administering standardized tests to all students in grades 3-8 and high school. Our students will lose several days of meaningful learning and connection with peers while they prepare for these tests and then sit for multi-day tests in multiple subjects. This is not the focus on relationships, community building, and well-being that we need as we end this year of pandemic schooling.

Even worse, the AOE has acknowledged that this year’s tests won’t produce valid results because of the variations in schooling and the likelihood that many students who are doing virtual schooling will not return to school just to take the tests. The AOE asked the feds to skip the tests altogether, which was good. But when the feds said no, AOE didn’t negotiate a creative way to reduce the testing burdens (such as sampling a few students) like other states did, which was not good.

Our community should come together to rethink our compliance with standardized testing. Our students deserve better and our teachers and schools should be freed to double down on some of the awesome things already happening, such as project based learning, service learning and community improvement, outdoor learning, connecting with community mentors, etc. We need to support the visionary educators and administrators in our schools rather than bowing to pressures to snap back to (inequitable) business as usual before the pandemic is even over.

The Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition (WAARC) is encouraging families and students in our community to consider opting out of statewide standardized tests this spring. On Wednesday, April 21, 7-8 p.m., WAARC will host an online information session to provide more information about the harms of standardized testing, how to have conversations with kids about it, and how to opt out if that’s your choice. (Registration here and WAARC’s position statement and additional info here.)

We don’t need to automatically accept inequitable systems. Together we can rethink, resist, and do better.

Life LeGeros and Alysia Backman are co-facilitators of WAARC’s Education Team