Standardized testing has been a cornerstone 
of school reform for two decades. But a bipartisan backlash against testing in recent years and the suspension of statewide testing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic have left the future of state assessments in question.
That’s the conclusion of a new FutureEd report, The Big Test: The Future of State Standardized Assessments. Written by senior fellow Lynn Olson and education analyst Craig Jerald, the report examines the evolution of the testing backlash, the current landscape, and how state testing systems must change to survive.
Drawing on a comprehensive, new 50-state analysis of testing legislation from 2014 through 2019, Olson and Jerald examine the striking scale of the pushback against testing and how the backlash is likely to play out in the dramatically different education landscape we suddenly find ourselves in.
