Stories, interviews, and videos where teachers discuss what standardized tests don’t measure.
Standardized tests have long been a staple of K-12 education in the U.S., used to gauge student performance and school effectiveness. However, these assessments often fail to capture a complete picture of student learning and development. Here’s what standardized tests tend to overlook:
1. Critical Thinking and Creativity
Standardized tests focus primarily on recall and comprehension, often through multiple-choice or short-answer questions. These formats make it difficult to measure skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which are crucial for success in the modern world. Real-world problems rarely have a single correct answer, but standardized tests don’t reflect this complexity.
2. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
Important qualities like empathy, resilience, self-regulation, and collaboration aren’t captured in standardized assessments. These social and emotional skills are essential for students’ well-being and long-term success, both personally and professionally. Schools that prioritize SEL often see improved academic performance, but these gains are rarely reflected in test scores.
3. Cultural and Socioeconomic Factors
Standardized tests are designed with a one-size-fits-all approach, which doesn’t account for students’ diverse cultural backgrounds or economic conditions. Many questions may be biased toward students with certain cultural knowledge or experiences, while students from low-income households may face additional challenges, such as limited access to resources, that hinder their test performance.
4. Non-Academic Talents
Skills in the arts, athletics, and technical fields aren’t typically tested, even though these areas are where many students excel. By focusing solely on academic subjects like math and reading, standardized tests can leave students feeling undervalued for their unique abilities.
5. Mental Health and Well-Being
The pressures of high-stakes testing can exacerbate mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, which aren’t captured or considered in the testing process. The toll of test-related stress is well-documented, but it’s rarely part of discussions about a school or district’s performance.
6. Teacher Impact and Learning Environment
Tests often assess student performance without considering the quality of instruction, student-teacher relationships, or the overall learning environment. Teachers play a significant role in students’ academic success, but their influence is difficult to quantify in a standardized testing format.
By focusing solely on academic achievement, standardized tests miss the full spectrum of what makes students successful in school and in life. It’s important to explore more holistic approaches that evaluate students’ varied skills, strengths, and challenges.
The blog posts below explore teachers’ opinions on what testing tends to overlook.
It wasn't my original plan to become a teacher. At first, I didn't know if I was gonna go to college or not, but I ended up getting accepted into three schools. I wanted to do advertising. I was being…
I pretty much always knew I wanted to work with kids because I always found joy in it. I felt I had innate instincts, and I knew how to navigate different situations. When I was seven or eight years old,…
When I was in eighth grade, I had this very eccentric English teacher. He would whack the desks whenever he wanted people to answer — and sometimes he would only call on the kids who were reliably the ‘smart kids.’ …
Seven teachers from Madrid Neighborhood School in Phoenix, Arizona share their perspectives on K-12 education.
It's hard to view my career in stories. Maybe it's not even my story. Maybe it’s the story of my dad. I grew up in South Chicago. My dad was a preschool teacher. And everywhere we went, it was like, ‘El maestro, el maestro!’ And so that made me a celebrity by extension: la hija del maestro.
Because we don't have art in our building, I actually have an easel and paint in the back of my classroom. The kids come in for breakfast, they see me painting.
One of the differences between learning from an AI program and learning with a teacher in a dialectical manner is that you don't have that empathy, connection, dialogue. All of our kids have so much potential and deserve for someone to have high expectations of them and to help them improve and grow, whatever that means for them.
I grew up in Oak Park in the 1980s. People were all about the melting pot. The idea was that everyone is the same and nobody looks different — we're all part of this collective homogenous blob. One of the drawbacks to that was that I was never really seen.
I was the kid who was under the table with a fireman's helmet on, covering his ears because he didn't understand what people were saying. I would get frustrated all the time because I didn't understand multiple syllable words. So in elementary school, I was diagnosed with dyslexia.