“Standardized tests have never been valid or reliable measures of what students know and are able to do, and they are especially unreliable now," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
“While its plan does offer the option for testing modifications and waivers for accountability requirements, which is a start, it misses a huge opportunity to really help our students by allowing the waiver of assessments and the substitution, instead, of locally developed, authentic assessments that could be used by educators and parents as a baseline for work this summer and next year,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a written statement.
Around the country, school administrators are estimating how many of their students will opt out of the tests or fail to show up. Though Phipps’s district is currently online only, it is moving to a hybrid schedule in March. Students who opt to continue to study remotely will be asked to come to school for testing days only. Phipps is relieved to know where the Biden administration stands, he said, because he was worried states would be left in limbo, left without getting enough planning time to design tests that work for their students.
By requiring standardizedtesting, you are ignoring the effects of the pandemic on our children, their brains, their learning. It's not virtual vs classroom. By ignoring the pandemic's effect, you are declaring it a hoax as our former president did. Our DOE needs to be smarter.