Rethinking Standardized Testing: Calling for Equity to Close the Achievement Gap

Throughout the pandemic, standardized testing was placed on hold as schools struggled to save their students from falling years behind in their education.

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Recently, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) released its 2022 report on data concerning the pass rates for the licensing exam for social workers. The results of this report were staggering and illustrated the disparities in standardized testing between white test takers and test takers of color, as well as older test takers. According to the report, the eventual pass rate for white students was 91%, while the eventual pass rate for Black students stood at 57%. As the executive director of an association of social workers, these results place a weight on the field and serve as a reminder of the history of these types of disparities in testing while encouraging those in social work and education to look toward closing gaps.

These results also speak to an insidious history involving standardized testing in the United States. While students from kindergarten through graduate school may view these exams as part of the educational process that everyone must equally endure, the truth behind those Blue Book essays and multiple choice questions is far more complex.

Throughout the pandemic, schools shifted from in-person to online instruction. Standardized testing was placed on hold as schools struggled to save their students from falling years behind in their education. With the 2021-2022 school year, standardized testing returned, much to the chagrin of the National Education Association and other education-aligned non-profits that agreed with many teachers in believing the year following the shutdown should be used for instruction and student support.

Throughout the pandemic, it was hard to ignore that communities and schools with a higher percentage of minority students fared far worse than their white peers. That achievement gap only widens as the school system brings standardized testing back into the classroom. The widened achievement gap has long-reaching negative implications for minority students. Scores from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) test are major predictors of college success and, as a result, future career success.

White students already stand at an advantage with regard to college admissions and educational access. Without recognition, reform and an overall unlearning of the systems currently in place, the problems are likely to persist and minority students will fall further behind their white peers.

Tools of a Biased System

When standardized testing was first introduced, many Black and immigrant children did not have access to regular school instruction, well-funded public schools and certainly no desegregated schools in the South. This lack of educational equity has carried through to today, where standardized test scores can affect funding access for schools. When the schools populated by predominantly white communities had better funding and more resources from the beginning, Black and immigrant community schools were largely left behind. With each testing cycle showing achievement gaps, the opportunities for schools with less funding support to catch up continue to dwindle.

As the United States became more of a haven for immigrants throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, white sociologists and researchers grew concerned about non-whites entering the nation's public schools. Much of the noise surrounding the supremacy of white students and the call for separation was from eugenists such as Carl Brigham, who published "A Study of American Intelligence"in 1923. The book detailed Brigham's opinion that testing revealed the superiority of the "Nordic" race over African-Americans and warned against "promiscuous intermingling" among the various immigrant groups arriving every year.

Brigham assisted in aptitude testing for the U.S. military, and his approach was influential in developing the SAT. With the SAT debuting for incoming college students in the 1920s and the American College Testing (ACT) exam following in the 1950s, the tests that Brigham had a hand in creating joined a litany of high-stakes tests given to students at all points throughout their educational journey.

While the test score gap has narrowed since the 1970s, there still exists a noted and worrying disparity in test scores, especially between Black and white students. The gap is largely driven by differences in economic standing and educational access. Segregation has driven the achievement gap, with recent studies from Brookings showing that Black students from largely segregated schools fare far worse on standardized testing than Black students from more racially diverse school districts.

Rethinking Standardized Testing

Following the pandemic shutdown, as students returned to in-person instruction, there were calls to rethink how to evaluate student achievement. The pandemic offered those in education and leaders with decision-making power to impact education the ability to rethink historical norms in many ways. Many educators believed this was the ideal time to do away with antiquated evaluation approaches.

However, it was unknown how behind America's students would be as they returned to school. There was talk of easing students into diagnostic testing instead of throwing them full-on into the long, drawn-out standardized testing methods of old. With shorter, more curriculum-focused exams, students could not only slowly reacclimate to in-person school, but educators could get an idea of where students fell in terms of benchmarks and how to best educate those students moving forward.

As the results of the ASWB licensing exam show, achievement gaps in standardized testing lead to systemic disparities in professional development and career building. What begins as an inequitable system in childhood can follow minority students through their lifetime, hampering their ability to get an equitable education and start on a career path equal to that of their white peers.

In recent years, the pro-testing fervor of the "No Child Left Behind" Bush era has been waning. A two-year study conducted in 2015 showed that children between kindergarten and 12th grade were taking over 100 standardized tests. There has been an overwhelming call for change to the number of tests students are required to take, and a call to recognize the problems inherent in the testing system.

Through the development of more equitable, performance-based processes, testing limits and eliminating high-stakes consequences for test results, the era of inequality in standardized testing may be coming to an end. As a result, the achievement gap that has remained stagnant for decades may begin to close as new approaches to education and evaluation emerge.

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Jennifer Thompson


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