For "Equity," Oregon Ditched a Standardized Test

But the real reason was to hide the state's dismal failure to educate its children

Education

FOR “EQUITY,” OREGON DITCHED A STANDARDIZED TEST

But the real reason was to hide the state's dismal failure to educate its children

By the editors of JFBT

                 Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of “Back to School” articles on education   
                 we are publishing over the course of several weeks. Read the first post here.

In July, 2021, Oregon governor Kate Brown quietly signed SB-744, suspending the state's “essential skills” mandate, which used to require graduating high school seniors to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, and math. At the heart of that requirement was a standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment, or SBA, the elimination of which Brown’s office claimed would benefit students of color.

At the time, right-wing media jumped on the event as another example of leftist bureaucrats lowering standards in the name of equity, while the MSM barely covered it. The left-leaning debunking site Snopes pointed out that students in Oregon were still required to obtain 24 credits in core subjects in order to graduate.

Both liberal and conservative observers missed the point. While it's true that since 2015, the SBA (Smarter Balanced Assessment) test was compulsory for Oregon high school seniors, passing it was only one of several ways students could meet the “essential skills” requirement. If the issue isn’t actually lowering standards for “equity,” then what’s the fuss? In order to understand what’s really at stake, it’s necessary to know a little bit about the history of the test. 

The SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium), created by the Obama DOE as part of a $350 million initiative, and co-developed by the federal government and educational experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was primarily designed to hold schools accountable, not to evaluate student performance for high school graduation or college admissions purposes (like, say, the SAT). The SBA test enables a school to baseline the quality of instruction it offers, measure improvements over time, and compare its progress to schools in other districts and states (see p. 90 of the state of California’s “Systemwide Review of the Report of the Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force”). In Oregon, an SBA summative (also known as an end-of-year) test, was one of several methods students could use to demonstrate “essential skills” prior to graduating (“work samples” was another, but it too has been dropped: “Now, simply earning a minimum number of credits will suffice for a diploma”). Barely reported in any outlet is the fact that Oregon almost never used this wonky product of Obama’s DOE—designed to establish federal and state accountability requirements—to block students from graduating. This is because the test was never about student performance per se, but rather about Oregon’s performance educating them.

While the SBA is not beyond criticism, nonetheless the test—based on common core standards—does undergo constant revision under the guidance of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (which includes officials and educators from thirteen states). The SBAC’s website highlights its commitment to validity, and to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This sounds like a test that liberal Oregonians should love. Nevertheless, between 2015 (the year Oregon adopted the test) and 2019, only roughly half of students passed the test, and these sorry results also revealed large racial and socioeconomic performance disparities.

A state audit reported concerns among educators that “some student populations may experience the test differently than other students,” that some wouldn’t be able to afford “additional services or instruction,” and that others, especially minorities, might experience “additional stress,” as well as “negative impacts to [their] self‐esteem.” These concerns were reflected in a statement from Gov. Brown’s office, which explained that getting rid of the SBA would help “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”

It should be noted that neither the state audit nor the state legislature challenged the validity of the test. Take that in. The SBA test's validity as a metric was unchallenged. Nor was passing it required to receive a high school diploma. And, finally, the test had no impact on college admissions. What we are left with is the inference that the state eliminated the test on the grounds that the very act of taking the test was itself a source of trauma to students of color.

However, such an inference raises questions about the real motives of Governor Brown and the Oregon legislature:

[1] According to the state, only  55% of students passed the English language arts/literacy, or ELA, section and only 42% passed the math section. Note that the black population of Oregon is only 2.3% and other non-white groups are also not large: Latino 14%, Asian American 5%, Native American 1.9%, and Pacific Islander 0.5%. In Oregon, 75% of the population is non-Hispanic white. So, the largest share of students who failed to reach the basic achievement level on the SBA tests each year must have been white. Were these white students less likely than their non-white peers to experience the increased stress and lower self-esteem that officials complained about? If so, how were such impacts measured? What methodology was used to arrive at the conclusion that students of color—hardly the largest share of those failing let alone taking the test—were especially harmed by the test?  

[2] Brown’s office implied that the test was somehow bad for "Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color,” adding that “leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports.” It’s odd to find Asians on that list because, as a group, Asians are high academic achievers. Indeed, the Oregon DOE’s “Statewide Report Card, 2019-2020” (p. 33), showed that Asian students were more likely than their peers to demonstrate proficiency in “essential skills” through the SBA test than through the now also discontinued submission of a portfolio of “work samples” or other methods. Given Asian students’ performance on the test, it seems doubtful that they, their families, or leaders of their communities would have been clamoring for lower standards or fewer tests.

[3] The state audit claimed that the SBA test wasn’t fair because many students wouldn’t be able to afford “additional services or instruction” to prep for it. But as an assessment primarily intended to measure the quality of Oregon schools’ instruction, not student performance, it seems unlikely that many parents would have been motivated to seek out private tutoring services. Why bother, when passing it wasn’t necessary for graduating and would not impact college admission?

[4] Why did Biden’s DOE allow this to happen to an Obama DOE program? If it did try to intercede with the state of Oregon in the summer of 2021 to prevent the program from being put to bed, it did so quietly. Does Biden’s DOE have less interest in quantifying the performance of public schools, state by state, and holding them accountable, than did Obama’s DOE?

[5] Finally, again, why did Oregon get rid of the only standardized test deployed at scale to benchmark the quality of U.S. public schools on a state by state basis and hold administrators accountable? Could the reason be that Oregon’s SBA scores have been stagnant since 2015, and that this fact reflects poorly on the state’s public education system and the Oregon teacher’s union, the Oregon Education Association?

In September 2021, Betsy Hammond, education editor at The Oregonian, told WBUR that suspending the SBA test

"relieves pressure in the system on grown ups to do better for the students who are at risk of graduating without those skills. And they are disproportionately students of color, students learning English as a second language, students in poverty, students with disabilities. And the governor recognizes that. And that is not a point of pride for her."

So it seems that Oregon school administrators may have been embarrassed by an Obama-era test that continually showed the state has subpar schools (fourth graders in the state rank in the bottom six and eighth-graders in the bottom fifteen among all states). That’s exactly what the test (again, created by Obama’s DOE) was designed to reveal. Teachers didn’t like it for various reasons, and students and their parents (overwhelmingly white) didn’t like it—many “withdrew their kids from taking it”—because only half passed. So everybody in the system wanted to find a way to get rid of the test while also saving face.

Cue the rise of the school equity movement, with its crusade against purportedly racist student performance assessments. Oregon officials saw in the pretext of “equity” a way to get rid of a pesky state accountability assessment under the guise of protecting students of color. If Hammond is correct, that would explain the absurd inclusion of Asian students in the list of harmed groups (item [2], above) and the preposterous justification that private test prep was a problem (item [3], above) . 

Oregon tried to ditch the SBA test quietly, hoping no one would notice. If Gov. Brown had genuinely believed the state had hit upon a substantive way to help students of color, she'd have called a dozen press conferences to crow about it. Instead, it seems likely that this is just Oregon attempting to cover its failures in a veil of virtue. Let’s be clear. The suspension of the “essential skills” requirement is a dereliction of the state’s duty to provide equal opportunity to all. By eliminating the test, and other means of demonstrating proficiency, such as a portfolio of “work samples,” the state is throwing in the towel. Oregon has given up on bringing all its students, and particularly those from marginalized communities, up to basic educational standards. This amounts to the wholesale abandonment of the state’s children. Oregonians, and the rest of us, should be outraged.