Standardized Test Scores Fall Short When Measuring School Quality

Standardized test scores don’t really tell us what skills students know or what they can do; rather they give us a score that serves as a proxy (a representation) for what the test is trying to measure (e.g. where does the student rank compared to other students who took the same test in reading, math, etc.). Sure, tests can be useful when planning intervention for individual students, however elected officials use them for purposes they were not designed for (i.e. ranking school districts), and most elected officials do not understand the harm that they are doing by using these assessments for a purpose they weren’t designed for.  While a school and individual teacher have an impact on student achievement, extensive research has demonstrated that factors that are outside of the school’s control have a more significant influence on test scores. Median household income and parental educational levels are two such influences that have a profound impact on how students score. 

For instance, consider Ohio’s top 20 highest family median income communities. They had an average achievement test pass rate of 86.04%. The highest median family income in this group was $234,423 and the lowest was $122,078. Conversely, Ohio’s lowest 20 family median income communities had an average achievement pass rate of 37.49%. The highest median family income in this group was $42,257 and the lowest was $35,191. The passage rates essentially transform into Ohio giving a rating to which school district is better than the other. Are they measuring school quality or something else? The communities that have higher wealth score high. Those that don’t, score low. Those districts that are relying on their high test scores to tell them how good they are may not be as great as they think they are because the score influencing factors external to the school may be weighing heavily on student test performance–more so than the educators inside their school buildings. As a result, a school district that relies exclusively on these kinds of scores to boast about school quality may be overlooking key components of school quality. In short, high test scores may not be attributable to the quality of the school or the instruction within it. They may merely be a function of how much money parents make and the opportunities that those parents provide to their children.  In addition, schools that have had lower test scores when compared to those districts with wealth and opportunity may be deemed “bad schools,” when in fact they are making significant impacts that aren’t detected by standardized test scores.  They in turn could be abandoning promising practices because those practices may not be immediately impacting the standardized test scores they’re looking at. 

Criterion-Referenced/Competency-Based Tests Serve The Purpose

There are assessments that are designed to assess student skill along a continuum. They’re called criterion referenced or competency-based assessments. State tests are not criterion referenced or competency-based.  What are these kinds of assessments? They are assessments that evaluate students against a pre-specified criteria without referencing how the student compares to others. Does the student know all 26 letters of the alphabet? Can the student identify all shapes and colors? Does the student know how to blend sounds? Assessments like these tell us what kids know, not how they compare to others.

If you want to know whether or not kids are literate, use a skills-based assessment that makes this determination, not one that simply ranks kids on how high or low they scored.

Assessments developed by teachers are also criterion referenced or competency-based. Can the student perform 2 by 2 subtraction problems? Can the student explain how a cell divides? Teachers want their students to be successful because it shows that the teaching worked and the students learned. The hope with any classroom assessment is that all of the students in class will demonstrate mastery.  This is NOT how standardized achievement tests work. Standardized tests aren’t meant to determine mastery of a skill. They are meant to rank students and the government uses them to rate school districts. If you want to know whether or not kids are literate, use a skills-based assessment that makes this determination, not one that simply ranks kids on how high or low they scored!