State testing for all students occurs this week at my school. It is a despised component of the public school experience that yields dubious results at an enormous cost. But what is the alternative? Not testing students? How do we collect data on school performance if we don't? Use locally developed assessments to test students? If we do that how do we compare schools from one district to the next? And how do we know if the locally developed tests are even valid? If we want the information that state testing is supposed to yield then we have to administer state-created assessments to obtain it. We can't rely on districts to build their own assessments and self-report, that notion is an invitation for fraud and abuse. So we must either make peace with state testing or abandon it completely. There is no middle ground.
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