Bring Back High-Stakes School Testing

"Spellings, a key architect of No Child Left Behind and now president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, explains why U.S. test scores began to stagnate years before COVID and why the pandemic only deepened an accountability collapse already under way. They discuss the successes in states like Mississippi, the wasted billions in federal relief funds, and the political backlash against testing that, Spellings argues, has left millions of children behind."

"My guest today will be Margaret Spellings, who served as U.S. secretary of education from 2005 to 2009. We'll be discussing the ominous downward drift in U.S. student achievement, not just during COVID but even before. And we'll talk about the importance of testing as the best and surest way to improve student achievement and reverse the decline that the United States has suffered in the achievement of its students in recent years."

A controversy over Donald Trump's rumored commemorative coin reveals a culture of flattery and self-abasement shaping MAGA politics. U.S. test scores began to stagnate years before COVID, and the pandemic deepened an accountability collapse already under way. Accountability decline and a political backlash against testing have left millions of children behind. Some states, notably Mississippi, achieved measurable gains, while billions in federal relief funds were wasted without reversing downward trends. Testing is presented as the best and surest method to improve student achievement and reverse national decline. The Judgment of Paris recounts how the impressionists overturned the art establishment and shows how the future judges the present.

Read at The Atlantic