Why Would Missouri Legislators Lower Academic Standards for Children?

A version of the following commentary appeared in the Springfield News-Leader.

If we believe it’s essential for schools to teach core academic skills—like reading and math—then we should support the tools that help us measure those skills. Statewide standardized tests remain our best tool for understanding how much students are learning. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets counted.

However, there is growing opposition to state testing in Missouri on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, the education establishment has long resisted all forms of accountability, and what better way to shut down accountability than to stop measuring how students perform in school? The left has been surprisingly effective in undermining the credibility of state tests, leading many to believe they don’t measure what matters. Standardized tests have been criticized for being too narrow, unobjective, and even racist. (I wish I were exaggerating on the last point, but I am not.) At the university level, we saw a brief movement to eliminate SAT and ACT requirements—only to see many institutions walk those changes back once they realized these tests provide crucial insight into academic readiness.

Meanwhile, on the right, the opposition to testing is relatively new. Not long ago, political conservatives were strong advocates for test-based accountability. No Child Left Behind, the largest test-based accountability policy in U.S. history, was ushered in under George W. Bush in the early 2000s. But today, it seems that testing has been swept up in a general push to shrink government and localize decision-making. In Missouri, testing is viewed as part of the state’s top-down policy agenda and a threat to local control.

This left-right alliance is playing out now in Jefferson City. Senate Bill 360, which would dismantle uniform statewide testing and accountability in Missouri, is sponsored by Republican Senator Jill Carter and supported by the National Education Association, a group typically aligned with the left.

All of this is unfortunate, because the truth is we need state standardized tests. The Missouri tests are not what many have been led to believe. They are objective, they are not racially biased, and they are not political. They are not concoctions brewed up in the back room of state government—rather, they are developed by independent experts, grounded in years of research, and focused almost entirely on reading and math.

Without statewide testing, we risk replacing hard data with empty assurances. School districts will insist students are learning—they’re doing exceptionally well, in fact!—and we’ll have no choice but to trust them.

An extreme policy would be to end testing entirely, but an equally damaging policy would be to abandon a common state test and allow school districts to use their own tests. This sounds appealing to local-control advocates, and in fact is the proposal on the table in SB360. But if this were to happen, it would be impossible to compare outcomes across districts, leaving us in the same place as if we had no testing at all.

If you’re unhappy with the direction schools are heading, just wait until we don’t have state tests—and the hard data provided by the tests—to keep them in line.