By Erin Jones

The Biden administration has decided to go forward with state testing in schools this year.

Nothing besides pressure from a billion-dollar testing industry can be motivating this decision.

There is no amount of usable information that will come from this experience — not about students, nor about schools.

I have spoken for months about my disdain for the narrative regarding “student learning loss,” particularly in relation to Black, Brown and Native students.

Behind whom?

Who decided that every five-year-old across the world or across the nation should know the same things?

Furthermore, have we not all experienced a pandemic?

Which learnings are most critical in this moment?

As I talk to hundreds of students every week, I hear students of all races talk about how much they have learned this year about racial justice, about the true history of this nation, about the ways they can advocate both for themselves and for their friends. I hear students talk about the new skills they have developed — writing, drawing, cooking, videography. They have learned about their mental and emotional health needs.

Although there are obviously students who live in homes that are not safe for a variety of reasons, there are so many students and parents who are talking about the new ways they have learned to enjoy hobbies and conversations together, who have learned to care for one another in new and deeper ways.

I beg us to seek out ways to lift up/elevate/search out the ways our young people have learned and grown in the last year.

I beg us to seek out ways to illuminate the learnings of adult educators over the last year — about how to show up as allies, how to engage more effectively in difficult conversations, how to leverage technology, how and where to engage families and community supports.

I believe we have also learned what not to do. We have become more aware of the elements of the teaching profession that are doing harm — to adults and to students.

We cannot afford to move into next year as if this year hadn’t happened. We cannot afford to snap back to what was, to miss out on the many ways we all learned and grew over the past year.

I am heartsick that, just as so many schools are returning to in-person learning for the first time, there will now be pressure not to check in and do the necessary work of building relationships, creating community and BRAVE spaces, but to prepare students for an arbitWerary measurement of their knowledge about skills that are not critical right now.

I am heartsick that educators, who have been doing mental and physical gymnastics to try to put together learning opportunities in a virtual space with which most were completely unfamiliar just a year ago, will now have to spend the small number of days they get to actually be present with their students accelerating their students’ learning in math and reading.

I bet I can make a pretty good guess about where students will “meet standard” and where they won’t. What will this test tell us that educators don’t already know?

Oh, and hasn’t a return to school been mandated by our state leaders to address the mental health needs of our students?

Where are the resources — time, money, expertise — for that?

I am sorry, teachers and students. We should have done better to fight on your behalf.