Testing students’ reading and math skills this spring will be challenging. Many will be at home, some with inadequate technology and Internet access. Others are “missing” from remote education. Some groups, including teachers’ unions, want Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to waive testing for K-8 students for a second year.
Testing is essential to assess the pandemic’s “catastrophic” damage and figure out how to repair it, editorializes the Washington Post.
How can schools create plans to make up for Covid-related learning losses if those losses haven’t been measured? Wouldn’t knowing which students have been most adversely affected be helpful in directing resources for mitigation efforts? Don’t parents have a right to know whether their sons and daughters are achieving?
Cardona has supporting testing students in the spring with a focus on improving learning rather than accountability, reports the Post.