Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests
One month after taking office, the Biden administration faced its first major education policy test. It failed miserably.
Despite a campaign promise to end standardized testing in public schools (See “Biden’s Broken Promise: Time to Opt Out!” by Denisha Jones), on Feb. 22 administration officials declared it would not grant “blanket waivers of assessments” for the current school year despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The announcement drew immediate grassroots protest that clogged U.S. Education Department (ED) phone lines and ensured that students returning to classrooms after a year of trauma and chaos would face hours of useless standardized tests mandated by the federal government.
The decision also set in motion a state-by-state battle around testing that is now underway, and reopened fault lines in the Democratic Party over education policy that were papered over during the campaign against Trump.
One year ago, as the pandemic swept the country, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos granted testing waivers to all 50 states. The move instantly underscored the educational irrelevance of the tests and their existence as an obstacle to serving the real needs of students.
As Biden pushed to reopen schools during his first 100 days, pressure built for a renewal of the testing waivers. A growing number of states including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, South Carolina, and Georgia announced plans to seek them while the education world awaited confirmation of Miguel Cardona, the Connecticut state superintendent Biden nominated for education secretary.
But just days before Cardona’s confirmation, Acting Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum released a letter declaring that all states would be required to give the tests mandated by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as the “Every Student Succeeds Act”). Rosenblum came to Biden’s education policy team directly from Education Trust, the pro-testing corporate reform lobby that until late April was led by John King, a longtime, pro-testing proponent who succeeded Arne Duncan as secretary of education in the Obama Administration.
For months, pro-testing corporate reformers had worked to head off calls for another round of testing waivers. Mass standardized testing is the engine of corporate education reform and its supporters feared a second year without scores could permanently weaken the testing CONTINUE READING: Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests - Rethinking Schools