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You may not have noticed, but this week in Pennsylvania — and thus, locally — an idea of noble intent that bore little beyond bad fruit finally fell to wayside. The Pennsylvania legislature agreed to nix using the Keystone Exams as a requirement for high school graduation, offering instead a broad range of ways for students to show they are ready for college or the real world.

This was a mistake it took nearly a decade to correct. In 2010, Harrisburg voted to make the exams in algebra I, biology and literature the diploma gold standard. Beginning in 2017 (later delayed to 2019), the rule insisted, you had to pass all three or undergo remediation and a “project-based assessment” from the state department of education. Students could retake the tests several times, but pass they must.

This came amid our national obsession with standardized tests launched with the federal No Child Left Behind law of 2002, which required annual math and reading tests in every public school in grades three through eight. By 2014, 100 percent of those students had to score proficient or better. Pennsylvania decided to piggy-back the Keystone Exams mandate onto that.

Few argued against because, frankly, it sounds like an obvious idea: Hold schools accountable, assure students don’t slip through the cracks, identify and correct “failing” schools, give the public a way to compare different schools.

Except …

The 100 percent goal was never attainable, and was steadily watered down as 2014 approached, until the federal department of education started granting waivers. The whole goal was scrapped with passage of the “Every Student Succeeds Act” in 2015.

“Accountability” became a moving goal post. Schools were judged by how low their scores were in relation to all the other schools, or by how quickly they improved scores. The former meant low-scoring schools could improve test results substantially and still be in the bottom 5 or 10 percent of all schools, and that high-scoring schools could look bad because there wasn’t much room to improve.

Students didn’t merely slip through cracks, cracks were created to slip them into. High stakes tests led to widespread cheating. Districts reconfigured grades and pulled other gimmicks to keep overall test results high. And parents started an ever-growing trend of opting out of the tests.

Tests were given in the spring but results weren’t released until the fall, after students had moved on to a new grade if not a new school. There was no timely opportunity to take genuine corrective action to help specific students based on those tests.

And comparing schools? As the data mounted an old truth emerged: Demographics impact standardized test results. Comparing a school with 90 percent low-income enrollment to one with 10 percent made no sense without considering factors beyond the scores and beyond the school’s reach to fix. Yet the public compared without regard to that fact — Wilkes-Barre Area School District has taken stern criticism for low standardized test results for years.

Lastly, you will be hard pressed to find any other developed nation with a successful education system that uses standardized tests with the frequency of the U.S. They don’t even come close.

Killing the Keystone Exam mandate was absolutely the right thing to do. Standardized tests can be useful as a tool; they are detrimental when considered to be the tool.

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