State board to discuss possible federal waiver from standardized tests

During its meeting Wednesday, the State Board of Education will discuss how the state should respond if the president-elect’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, authorizes a waiver for annual standardized testing this spring in math and English language arts.

Last year, amid the initial shutdown of schools from Covid-19, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos canceled the tests, mandated annually for students in grades 3 to 8 and for one grade in high school. Whether to suspend the tests — the Smarter Balanced assessments in California — for another year or, more likely, to allow states to modify the requirements  through a waiver, will be one of Cardona’s first big decisions.

Some civil rights groups and political leaders, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, who will chair the Senate’s education committee, argue that resuming the tests will be crucial to measure the disparate impact of the pandemic on racial and ethnics groups and on low-income students, students with disabilities and English learners. Others counter that administering testing remotely will impose technical challenges, and produce invalid results, while administering in-person tests to students who need a joyous welcome back to school would be counterproductive.

Possible alternatives would be to push the testing window back to summer and administer a different, shorter test that would produce schoolwide or districtwide results but not necessarily individual scores.

The Biden administration has not indicated its preference. But Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the state board, has led Biden’s education transition team. She may indicate what the state can anticipate. The issue will be taken up Wednesday morning on Item 3 of the agenda.  To view the meeting webcast, go here. The meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m.