In Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond, opponents of school choice have sought to force public school tests on private schools participating in school choice programs. While they’ve been thwarted for now, proponents of education choice should remain ready to defend assessment choice. It’s what lets a school’s own academic standard, not a borrowed one, be the standard it’s judged by.
Most recently, opponents of education freedom in Tennessee condemned a new state law letting students in the state’s Education Savings Account program to take a nationally standardized test instead of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. They decried ESA students’ underperformance on the TCAP and assert that not administering the public school test is to abandon the only legitimate measure of whether school choice works.
