Michael J. Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio: Did Kansas err in going it alone on standardized testing?

A wise old African saying cautions: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Back in 2013, the Kansas State Board of Education made a decision to go it alone on standardized testing, pulling out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a coalition of more than 20 states working together to develop a Common Core-aligned test. It’s worth asking whether this decision did a disservice to Kansas’ children.

That’s one possible inference from a new study published by our organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Our analysts found that SBAC indeed delivers on its promise to be a high-quality, challenging assessment that’s well-matched to the new standards that Kansas and other states adopted in 2010.

This is a significant accomplishment. The standardized tests that most states had been using were typically cheap, low-level, fill-in-the-blank tests that encouraged teachers to spend endless classroom hours on mindless test preparation.

By 2010, policymakers in Kansas and most other states had recognized these problems and set out to replace the old tests with “next generation” assessments like SBAC and the PARCC test (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). About half of states administered one of these two tests in 2014-15 – and these turned out to be the highest rated in our evaluation.

Along the way, however, the Common Core became politically radioactive, which led some states, including Kansas, to bail on the common assessments even while holding the line on the underlying standards.

Today, nobody can be sure whether the alternative test that Kansas has adopted – the Kansas Assessment Program – is a good one, as there’s never been an indepen- dent evaluation of it such as the one completed for SBAC and other national exams. Sunflower State officials should commission one immediately using objective reviewers to ensure that the test places sufficient emphasis on the most important content needed for college and career readiness.

Given the powerful effects that tests have on what happens in schools, the crucial criterion for judging them is: Does the test encourage the kind of curriculum and instruction we want for children? In the case of the PARCC and SBAC tests, the answer from our review is “yes.”

Teachers, parents and taxpayers in Kansas should be concerned that for the Kansas Assessment Program, the answer is, “We don’t know.” Getting a better answer needs to be an urgent priority.

This story was originally published March 10, 2016 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Michael J. Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio: Did Kansas err in going it alone on standardized testing?."