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Even some educators skeptical of technology say they can’t go cold turkey on Chromebooks. Why? Because standardized testing is now widely done via computer.
“Third grade is the first year of testing, and we wouldn't want that to be the first time kids are getting exposed to devices,” Los Angeles school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told me recently, explaining why the district isn’t banning screens after first grade.
Similarly, Baltimore cut back on tech in early grades, but will continue to provide devices to third graders because of testing, the Banner reported earlier this year. A North Carolina superintendent also said the district must maintain some tech to prepare students for assessments. “But if I had the choice, I’d say bubble sheets please,” Stan Winborne, the superintendent of Granville County Public Schools, told the Wall Street Journal.
In other words, digital testing has had the unintended consequence of promoting tech-powered instruction. This raises a pointed question that more schools and policymakers may soon have to grapple with: Should the mode of testing be driving key instructional decisions?
Scott Marion, a psychometrician at the Center for Assessment, isn’t convinced that there should be a broad tech rollback. But he says it’s concerning when assessment alone is shaping pedagogy. “I don't like when people do things just for testing purposes,” he says.
Standardized testing has become increasingly digitized over the last couple decades for the same reason many things have: convenience. Instead of massive sheaves of paper shipped to and from schools, tests can be done on devices, which are plentiful these days. Online tests were also promoted as a way to more precisely measure student learning since questions can adapt to student skill level.
A downside, though, is that internet outages and other tech glitches can derail testing, as recently occurred in New York and has repeatedly happened in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, in the last several months, a remarkable backlash to tech in schools has swept the country. Some local school leaders and teachers have cut back on screen time. They’ve been able to move so quickly because there are few school tech mandates — except through testing. The federal government requires math and reading tests in grades three through eight; the format of those tests is set by states. Local leaders don’t control this.
Some research shows online testing can affect how well students perform. “There is a learning curve” to digital testing, says Marion, although he suspects that these days it’s not that steep.
Jared Cooney Horvath — a researcher, consultant, and ed-tech critic — argues that brief practice with online assessment is enough to prepare students. “Just because digital testing is the new norm, it does not follow that schooling needs to be redesigned around this format,” he wrote recently on his blog.
It’s an open question how much tech familiarity students need for such tests, especially in early grades. Regardless, perception appears to be holding some districts back from bigger tech reductions. “We want to limit screen time,” one Texas superintendent told a local news outlet. “We also know that we have to give students the opportunity to learn the skill of using technology, so that they can use it to demonstrate learning.”
States may also have an incentive to keep tech in their classrooms if officials think it can help boost scores on online tests. Although the federal NAEP exams don't have formal stakes attached, state leaders are eager to use scores to claim success of their policies. In 2018, after NAEP tests went digital, Louisiana’s state chief complained that students there might have seen scores drop because they were unfamiliar with computers. (NAEP officials said then this was carefully accounted for.)
Could states go back to paper-and-pencil tests if they wanted? Sure, though it would add logistical challenges and perhaps costs. Whether it’s worth it depends on what you think of general tech use in the classroom. The evidence at this point is ambiguous and in the eye of the beholder.
But with the ed-tech backlash showing no signs of slowing down, digital testing could become the next target.
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