Every April, the junior class spends three days taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exam. After up to 310 MHS students opted out of it last year, according to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress website, we need to consider whether the SBAC and standardized testing as a whole, are truly necessary.
Standardized testing ignores a simple truth about people: we are all unique. How can you create a test that is meant to be fair to an entire population? According to an article written by UCLA professor James Popham, you can’t. Popham states, “Many items on standardized achievement tests really focus on assessing skills learned outside of school —skills more likely to be learned in some socioeconomic settings than in others.”
It has long been known that there is a direct correlation between wealth and students’ academic achievement, especially standardized test scores, according to “Gentrification and Student Achievement,” a study done by Justin Joseph Ward and published by Portland State University. When students have money, they’re more likely to do well on these tests because they have access to resources that others don’t. According to the study, “Perhaps the most commonly understood connection is the overwhelming influence that family income plays on a student’s academic achievement.” California School Dashboard reports that around 31% of MHS students are considered economically disadvantaged. The SBAC effectively uses how well a student does on the test to make a judgment on an entire school while ignoring the broader issues.
Moreover, standardized testing has a troubling history with racism, writes John Rosales in an article written for the National Education Association. Although the overt racism has been toned down in standardized testing, traces of it are still found today — the worst part is it’s seemingly intentional. Educator Young Whan Choi said in “How to Address Racial Bias in Standardized Testing” that “test designers rely on questions which assume background knowledge more often held by White, middle-class students. … the standardized testing industry depends on these kinds of biased questions in order to create a wide range of scores.” According to the 2020-2021 MHS School Accountability Report Card, about 96% MHS students are racial minorities. Standardized tests, including the SBAC, are not made with our student body in mind, and it is not right that we take them.
While some proponents of the SBAC may argue that it’s important that people take it or else their school will be labeled “low-performing” as MHS now is. However, this label largely affects housing prices, and students shouldn’t have to be responsible for something like keeping the price of homes high.
Standardized testing is inherently flawed, and we can do better. We need to expand the way we look at tests such as the SBAC and can’t let them be the determining factor of a school’s success.