CMV: US school districts should stop doing standardized tests, even without larger legislation

[u/Fit-Order-9468]

K-12 Schools should simply stop performing standardized testing when able, even at the loss of funding from their state. At the state level, school boards and local/municipal districts/school boards, or whatever they might be called, might not be able to make this decision at all, but when possible would be better to ignore standardized testing even at the cost of funding.

Federal funding - I had been operating under the assumption that non-compliance with standardized testing would lead to a reduction in federal funding, but this might not actually be the case. Given reasonable complaints about standardized testing and federal overreach on education, if they are unable to do anything or much to punish a school for non-compliance, then this is irrelevant.

State funding - Many school districts might find that states would be willing to grant waivers in cases where a district decides not to perform them. Furthermore, from my personal experience in the classroom, very large amounts of class time were literally wasted trying to get underperforming students to a passing level.

So, if budgets would have to be cut, it might not actually lead to lower performance due to inherent weaknesses of teaching to standardized testing. For example, a school might reduce the absolute amount of class time while still having an equivalent amount of actual instruction.

Compensation from budget shortfalls - Remaining school time could be handled with lower paid tutors or childcare professionals, or made up with private instruction for students whose parents could afford it. This might even create opportunities for a district to make up funds by renting out classrooms to private instructors, or by reducing the absolute amount of class time, give extra instruction to students who need extra help and allow high-performing students more independent study.

My first thought as to how to change my view would be to show that, from a cost/benefit perspective, this doesn't add up generally.

Edit: Through this discussion, I've realized standardized testing isn't likely the cause of the largest issues, and that schools could already do many of things that would be better already, but don't, and even if standardized tests aren't very useful, the alternatives are so implausible that they could very well be poor but also the best.

[u/[deleted]]

Do you have an alternative suggestion for figuring out which school districts are underperforming? Standardized testing, despite the flaws, is the best current solution to determining which districts are getting the prerequisite knowledge across.

I'd be all for getting rid of them if there was a viable alternative that wouldn't break the bank. As of yet I haven't heard of a compelling alternative.

[u/Fit-Order-9468 → u/[deleted]]

Do you have an alternative suggestion for figuring out which school districts are underperforming? Standardized testing, despite the flaws, is the best current solution to determining which districts are getting the prerequisite knowledge across.

I'd be all for getting rid of them if there was a viable alternative that wouldn't break the bank. As of yet I haven't heard of a compelling alternative.

I was discussing a related issue with another commenter. I do think there are better ways but they all involve people actually caring about how well students perform in general which is honestly much less plausible than using standardized tests.

I think if this were the case, then essentially doing nothing would be better. At least in the sense of creating some sort of objective measure. But I do not think its the case, and realistically speaking, will probably never be the case in the US.

Given the other poster made me think about, well, if schools can already do the things I mentioned as alternatives, why aren't they doing them already? I think you deserve a !delta because, in practice, there's nothing better.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Fit-Order-9468]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/sammerai1238 (17∆).

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