STATEMENT OF HARRY FEDER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAIR & OPEN TESTING (FAIRTEST)
December 2023
The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, also known as FairTest, has since 1985 worked to end the misuse and overuse of standardized testing and to ensure that assessment of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid, equitable and educationally beneficial.
The number of states with high school exit exam requirements has declined rapidly from a peak of 27 in the years after the passage of No Child Left Behind to its lowest level since the mid-1990s. New Jersey is currently one of only nine jurisdictions that have a graduation test in place for the high school class of 2024.
Of those nine jurisdictions, four, including New Jersey, have taken measures to reconsider graduation requirements or have legislation or ballot action pending to suspend the exit exam requirement. In New York, a Blue Ribbon Commission established by the Board of Regents recommended the development of multiple pathways for graduation and suspending the Regents exams as the sole gatekeeper for a high school diploma. See New York Commission Report. Massachusetts has both pending legislation (the Thrive Act) and a ballot question for the next election that would eliminate passage of the MCAS exams as a graduation requirement. Florida has legislation that would eliminate its statewide graduation exam requirement. Florida Bill.
The primary reason for the sharp drop-off is research evidence concluding that exit tests produced few benefits while being associated with significant costs, particularly for disadvantaged students. Overall, exit exams have harmed tens of thousands of young people without improving average high school outcomes.
Furthermore, there is a growing realization among educators, parents and policymakers that standardized tests do not capture the full range of student abilities and are poor indicators of the kinds of knowledge, habits, and skills that graduates need in entering the modern world of citizenship, college and career.
Why it’s time to for New Jersey to end its high school graduation testing requirement for the class of 2024 and beyond:
- Exit exams deny diplomas to thousands of U.S. students each year, regardless of whether they have stayed in school, completed all other high school graduation requirements, and demonstrated competency in other ways. A review by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that high school graduation tests have done nothing to lift student achievement but have raised dropout rates. These tests give students who have worked hard, played by the rules, and stayed in school the status of high school dropouts, with the same barriers to opportunity and employment. Increased dropout rates are especially pronounced in states that do not provide any alternative pathway for those who fail the tests.
- The consequences of exit exams create an enormous cost to society. Adults without a diploma earn less, are less likely to be employed or have stable families. At the same time, they are more likely to be imprisoned: an extreme focus on testing creates disengaged students, putting many at risk of joining the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
- Students with disabilities, English language learners (ELLs), African-American, Latino, Native American and low-income students are far more likely to be denied a diploma for not passing a test. In the Massachusetts high school class of 2015, for example, 92% of white students passed all three graduation exams (English, math, and science), but just 76% of blacks, 71% of Latinos, 61% of students with disabilities and 41% of English language learners passed. These failure rates contribute to higher dropout rates: Latino and African-American students drop out at rates three to four times that of white students. Eleventh and 12th graders who have not passed the state tests are more than 13 times as likely to drop out of school as those who have passed.
- A recent study by John Papay of Brown University examined the performance of newcomers who were ELLs in Massachusetts, a state with high stakes exit exams. Fewer than one-third meet English proficiency targets each year, and newcomers represent 32% of students who never pass one or more of the 10th grade MCAS tests. Only 54% of newcomers graduate from high school, and their rates of four-year college enrollment are also quite low.
- High-stakes testing undermines education quality.Untested subjects are ignored, while teaching in tested subjects concentrates too narrowly on the tests, with standardized exam preparation dominating some classrooms. Since tests are mostly multiple choice, students focus on rote learning instead of learning to think and apply their knowledge. In high school this means students must take additional math or reading classes at the expense of other subjects in which they are more interested. Students who do not pass a graduation test are less likely to take college-oriented courses in subsequent high school years.
- Graduation tests have “measurement error,”which means some children will fail even though they know the subject. Offering multiple opportunities to take the test only partially solves this problem.
- A student’s transcript, not a test score, is what makes a high school diploma truly meaningful and gives the most accurate picture of a student’s readiness for college and careers. Multiple studies have confirmed that high school grades are much stronger predictors of undergraduate performance than are standardized test scores.
- There are better ways to assess students. High schools participating in the New York Performance Standards Consortium, for example, use a performance-based assessment approach, tied to project-based learning, which has been highly successful.
FairTest urges New Jersey policy makers to heed the research and the experience of many other states by ending its outdated, counter-productive graduation testing requirement.
Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information. References to studies are available on request.