As we head into our school wide administration of the ACT and Aspire+ state tests each year, I wanted to take some time to provide you with some context around how standardized testing fits into the public education system and further inform the position you hold on this topic. It isn’t my intention here to argue for or against the use or administration of these exams in our schools, but I feel it is one of my duties to inform the community of some of the lesser known variables around their use and purpose. 

An appropriate place to start is funding and accountability. Many decades ago, the lion’s share of public education funding came directly from local property taxes which were collected and then invested in local neighborhood schools. This is no longer the case and it hasn’t been for some time. During the 2015–16 school year in Utah, 37% of revenue came from local sources while state revenue made up 54.6% with the remaining revenue coming from federal sources. This means that the state provides more than half of the funding our public schools receive. With funding comes accountability for that funding. It is extraordinarily difficult for the state to precisely measure the effectiveness of public education. This is where standardized testing, resource allocation plans, board policies, administrative regulations, and other features of a public school district are scrutinized. In conclusion, we may not know what political stance the legislature might take in the context of funding when standardized testing outcomes improve or decline. Obviously, Utah is extraordinarily underfunded in relation to other states, ranking right near the bottom of the list.

Another variable to consider is the growing influence of school choice, or voucher programs, as we call them here in Utah. In some ways, declining test scores can be used by the legislature to bolster school choice initiatives and efforts, taking away the leverage of our public school system. Higher test scores means higher levels of proficiency as defined by the Utah State Board of Education. In the conversation around school choice, standardized test scores are often cited. These results can certainly impact the presence of charter schools and private schools, and even prompt the legislature to turn public education funding toward these school choice initiatives, thereby stripping away funding in an already underfunded system. This has already occurred here in Utah and is growing in scale.

Another prominent variable and equally important is the Utah School Report Card system we use in Utah as another accountability feature. This is a public site I encourage you all to visit. Results on standardized tests comprise a significant portion of the score Weber High receives. These school report card scores have been shown to influence business growth, and, more importantly, local real estate value. You would be hard pressed to find local neighborhoods of notable affluence with low achievement scores in their local public schools. In a similar vein, you are also significantly more likely to find lower achieving schools in areas of lower socioeconomic status. These two factors tend to reinforce each other. 

To summarize, funding, accountability, and community presence and influence are all tied, in some way, to the outcomes of standardized testing at this time. Your student’s individual trajectory in their life is almost certainly not going to be impacted by their score on the ACT or the Aspire+, however, if we collectively reinforced that, we might lose critical public education funding, have more unneeded state intervention in our local schools, and the homes around our school could lose financial value. We can individually or collectively agree or disagree on the use of standardized testing, however, it is certainly in our collective best interest for our students to try their very best to perform on these exams. We want our students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired as they progress toward their well earned day of graduation from high school.