States Need to Plan Now to Forego Standardized Testing in 2020-21
As states grapple with the reality of insufficient COVID-19 testing, including critical testing of the asymptomatic who might be carriers as well as those who have already had the virus and unknowingly developed COVID-19 antibodies; and as states face the truth that a vaccine is likely at best a year away, and as states wrestle with the idea that the virus may well recycle in the fall, leaders in those same states need to decide now to scrap standardized testing in their schools for the 2020-21 school year.
Students nationwide are missing in-person classroom instruction this spring due to COVID-19, and it is realistic to expect that the virus may well impact the opening of schools for the 2020-21 school year. Even as governors, school boards and other officials contend with the complexities of shuttered school buildings in the spring of 2020, a cloud looms concerning how, exactly, to enact social distancing and other protections at school in the fall of 2020.
It is entirely possible in 2020-21 that students might have to attend school in shifts, or experience some hybrid of in-person and distant instruction, or that schools, districts, or entire states might have to shelter in place at some point during the 2020-21 school year due to coronavirus resurgence.
Standardized testing eats up a lot of time, energy, and money. For many schools, CONTINUE READING: States Need to Plan Now to Forego Standardized Testing in 2020-21 | deutsch29
