K-12 Students Face An Alphabet Soup Of Standardized Tests. What Purpose do They Serve?

An inescapable element of K-12 public education in the United States is testing. For many students and parents, testing has become ubiquitous. It feels like it is everywhere, every day, all the time.

American political and educational systems place such significant focus on test scores that they are routinely published and tracked on websites. School administrators adjust calendars and bell schedules to accommodate the frequency of standardized educational assessments. Testing is so embedded in K-12 life that schools now have official roles, such as Testing Coordinator and Coordinator of Assessment and Remediation, solely designated to standardized test preparation and administration.

Local course-related assessments occur regularly. But American K-12 students also participate in an alphabet soup of annual state-specific and national assessments such as NAEP, SAT, and the ACT.

Standardized tests are used to set national and state policy for education reform, inform local decision-making, identify accountability measures, and make decisions regarding resource allocation.

Of course, standardized tests also lead to very public ranking of student groups and schools. Comparisons abound.

The pressure on students from what feels like a 180-day testing season is real. We know that beyond daily instruction, a wide variety of factors affect student test scores, including student mental health concerns, absenteeism, and parent education and occupation.

To ensure robust and equitable engagement, schools are held to 95% student participation rates for administered state tests. Meeting that percentage is important for schools, but parents and guardians increasingly question whether participation in the tests has any meaningful benefit for their students. This tension feeds an opt-out movement that has been around for several years as parents refuse to allow their students to participate in testing that is not required to move forward programmatically or for graduation.

With the significant weight standardized tests carry, families, students, and educators need to know what these tests seek to quantify and what their results mean for students and schools.

Recent discussion has focused on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely known as the Nation’s Report Card. NAEP is administered and reported through the National Center for Education Statistics, an independent and nonpartisan branch of the U.S. Department of Education. NCES is mandated by Congress to collect, analyze, and disseminate information about education in the United States and internationally. As the only measure to offer consistent national comparative data on K-12 student performance, NAEP holds significant information. Here’s why.

The Every Student Succeeds Act is a complex piece of legislation that directs states to measure student performance in math, reading, and science. This is done through standardized tests related to each state’s chosen curricula and learning standards. In Iowa, student assessments are known as the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress. In Virginia, students take Standards of Learning tests and in Massachusetts, students participate in the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. These tools measure student mastery of each state’s learning standards.

Because students in each state are not taught, nor tested on, the same curriculum, it is not possible to compare Iowa’s scores with Virginia or Massachusetts. State-level assessments serve a purpose for state or regional data analysis but are not comparable from state to state.

NAEP, however, is administered through a sampling of American public and private school students across all states and jurisdictions. This sets up a basis for comparison across the country. While not every American school is involved or every student tested, NAEP’s sampling system offers results with national reach. The assessments offer what are known as main NAEP and long-term trend NAEP.

Every two years, students are selected by grade level (4, 8, 12) to participate in main NAEP. Mathematics and reading are associated with NAEP score reporting, but other subjects such as civics, science, geography, and technology and engineering literacy are assessed periodically. Recent attention focuses on clear declines in reading and mathematics scores for American students. You can find your state’s assessment details here.

Long-term trend NAEP assessments offer an extended view of reading and mathematics achievement for students at ages 9, 13, and 17. Recently released long-term trend data spotlights the impact of primarily negative pandemic-related academic outcomes. Long-term trend data is not reported by state. It offers a national view. released long-term trend data

It is important to understand one more wrinkle of complication—the difference between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests.

NAEP and state-level tests are criterion related, aligned with a specific curriculum. When properly planned and executed, what was taught is what is tested. I like to think of this as you against the content, which is a fixed set of standards. Ideally, every student could earn a passing score on a rigorous and well-aligned test. That is the goal, after all—high levels of mastery.

In contrast, norm-referenced scoring is comparative and ranks students in relation to one another. Think of this as you against the person sitting next to you. It is a competition relative to others taking the same test. Only 1% of students can score in the 99th or the 50th percentile on norm-referenced assessments such as the California Achievement Test.

If you want to learn more, We Are Teachers offers a thorough discussion of standardized testing. And the Glossary of Education Reform is an informative resource for finding clear explanations of terms and concepts related to how schools function and, relatedly, what role assessments play in schools.

As parents and educators make sense of the widely publicized results of state and national assessments, it is crucial to understand the context around student scores and how they can and should be used in a comparative exercise. Comparisons have value but must be made with a clear understanding of the full data set and factors that influence that data to make sense of what is happening in our schools.