Walters' Scheme To 'End' Standardized Testing' is NOT A No Brainer

As has been previously reported, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, recently declared that he is unilaterally “ending standardized testing” at the end of school years – starting with the 2025-26 school year which is starting now.

That’s not how these things work. He has no authority under state law or federal funding rules to institute this change on his own.

Introducing an alternative way to collect educational outcomes data in itself has merit. Ask a public school teacher about how enormously stressful the system of year-end testing is that has been in place for many years.

To be a legitimate alternative, however, requires much more time and attention to how to coordinate a new assessment system. Walters pushing out a press release, obviously, is not adequate. Development of a valid assessment measures needs to be carefully researched and designed. Otherwise, the alternative plan could be riddled with pitfalls.

Before this scheme can be implemented, in order to retain federal funding for our state schools, a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education [DOE] is required. As Oklahoma Watch education reporter Jennifer Palmer has reported, the waiver application has been submitted. Her article describes the plan to replace standardized testing as the waiver application describes it. It also reports on what experts have to say about this plan's potential problems.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Public Comments Open Until Sept. 8

Part of the legal process for implementing Walters’ plan is a public comment period. The DOE has already chastised Walters for announcing his plan prematurely, as if it’s a done deal, before that legal process has even begun. A DOE official warned him to encourage public comment as required and to respect the entire process, taking the public comments seriously before pushing his plan through to the next step.

I encourage all Oklahomans to take a few minutes and submit comments. Please take advantage of his opportunity for input into an important issue, whatever your take on it is. It is quick and easy with the online form at:

https://oklahoma.gov/education/public_comment_peer_review_waiver.html

I submitted my public comment earlier today, summarizing my position. I wrote:

The manner in which this proposed change in assessments is presented gives rise to serious questions about its efficacy. How would the results of assessments from different vendors be aggregated in a meaningful way, given that each vendor's assessment will have a different basis, structure, and type of measure? How will it be assured that collectively these assessments will provide comparable outcome data to the standardized tests currently in use?

Or is the type of information from the standardized tests currently in use no longer considered necessary to analyze? If that is the case, what data is, instead, being considered as essential for analysis purposes, who determines that, and what is the legal process of arriving at that criteria which needs to be followed?

I agree with the Superintendent that the current standardized test regimen has problems, creates stress on students, teachers, and administrators, and results in a loss of academic freedom for educators who are in effect forced to "teach to the test," without considering whether the content of the test is the most educationally sound for each age group.

However, it seems like this change in assessment strategies is being proposed impulsively with inadequate attention to complex details.

This and the timing of the waiver request also gives the perception of a political motivation tainting the educational values involved, as the State Superintendent struggles to dodge the recent scandal of nudity being seen on his office television set during an executive session of the State Board. To what extent is this waiver being proposed to distract public attention from that controversy? It is impossible to know, but it is certainly possible to imagine that it is greater than "none."

Also, the manner in which the State Superintendent announced "the end of standardized testing," as if it were a fait accompli, reveals a disregard for the legal process at arriving at such a policy, and an eagerness to make headlines with the hope that he is credited for started a new system of assessment that other states will subsequently try to adopt, thereby heightening his national media profile in service to his political ambitions.

These political issues aside, I believe the current waiver application is being prematurely rushed through. I am against it.

I am not against the principle of arriving at an academically, statistically sound, thoroughly planned and coordinated alternative to the current regime of standardized testing. From what I can tell, that's not what this is.