Standardized Tests

Unfinished Agenda: The Future of Standards-Based School Reform
Few people have played a larger role in efforts to raise standards in the nation’s…

A Smart Role for State Standardized Testing in 2021
Put yourself in the shoes of a state or school district education leader about to…

Blueprint for Testing: How Schools Should Assess Students During Covid
As schools reopen this fall, educators will need to…

Podcast: How to Think About End-of-Year Testing
As Covid-19 makes us reconsider the best ways to teach students, we must also consider…

Podcast: Coronavirus Could Fuel Demand for Better Assessments
FutureEd Senior Fellow Lynn Olson, a former deputy director of the Bill & Melinda Gates…

The Big Test: The Future of Statewide Standardized Assessments
Standardized testing has been a cornerstone of school reform for two decades. But a…

From Teacher Pay to Free College, What Governors Want
Governors’ annual State of the State addresses are windows into what’s likely to be at…

Accountability Without Testing = Trouble
An unhappy episode in Montgomery County, Maryland, (where I live) reminds us that the quest…

What Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Get About School Reform
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently disparaged two decades of public school reform, in particular…

The New Testing Landscape: State Assessments Under ESSA
State testing systems are in transition. Buffeted by anti-testing sentiment on the left…

Past Is Prologue on Common Core Tests
The PARCC and Smarter Balanced state testing consortia set in motion significant improvements in state…

How the Common Core Changed Standardized Testing
When the U.S. Department of Education awarded $350 million to two consortia of states in…

A New Voice for American Education
To celebrate FutureEd’s third anniversary, we’re reposting our launch announcement from March 2, 2017: We…

In Defense of the Common Core and Its Tests
As everyone in the education community knows only too well, the Common Core State Standards…

What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non-Test Score Outcomes
Professor C. Kirabo Jackson finds that using both test-scores and non-test-score measures of…