Op-ed: Why standardized testing still matters in Missouri

This opinion piece originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

By Eric Syverson, Director of Policy & Research, Aligned. 

Across the nation, skepticism toward statewide assessment is rising. Teachers and families increasingly question whether traditional testing supports learning or just consumes valuable instructional time, acting more as a cudgel than a support tool.

Despite the political headwinds, assessment and accountability should remain foundational pillars of education policy. The question isn’t whether to measure learning, but how to do it better.

Standardized testing remains one of the most debated education policy areas. The shadow of the No Child Left Behind era looms large in every debate. On one hand, assessments provide a common measure of achievement across schools. On the other hand, research continues to show that tests often reflect socioeconomic background as much as school quality, which raises fair questions about fairness and usefulness.

Two seminal studies illustrate both the benefits and drawbacks.

• Benefits: Raj Chetty and his colleagues (2014) famously found that improvements in standardized test performance in Tennessee — obtained through effective teaching — had lasting effects on students’ lives. Students assigned to high “value-added” teachers were more likely to attend college and earn higher wages as adults. Their work shows that genuine test gains capture skills with long-term value.
• Drawbacks: A 2024 study by Maroun and Tienken examined New Jersey’s Algebra I exam and found that community demographics explained roughly 75% of the variance in school-level passing rates. In other words, districts’ outcomes were largely predictable based on socioeconomic status, not necessarily what students learned in school. The authors argue that this undermines the usefulness of exams as measures of school quality.

The takeaway is not that assessments and accountability should be abandoned; instead, accountability systems must evolve. Balanced approaches that combine standardized tests with growth measures, teacher input, and offer real-time diagnostics to teachers are most promising. The challenge is to design accountability systems that keep the transparency tests provide, while reducing their tendency to mirror inequality or distort instruction too much.

The tests Missouri administers today already tell us things that matter. A recent statewide analysis following more than 260,000 students from 8th grade into early adulthood found two clear patterns:

• Middle school test performance strongly predicts high school graduation, college enrollment, and degree completion.
• Students scoring proficient in 8th grade are far more likely to earn a four-year degree than those scoring basic, with especially large gains for students of color.

This study shows that academic proficiency can be a strong predictor of college and career outcomes. The problem is timing: a one-and-done, year-end score arrives too late to guide instruction, limiting teachers’ ability to intervene in real time.

To close that timing gap, Missouri is piloting the Success-Ready Student Assessment (SRSA) this year. The SRSA pairs shorter, through-year assessments aligned to Missouri’s standards with a summative check to maintain statewide comparability. The aim is to give educators and families timely, actionable information during the year without losing the clarity that comes from a common yardstick.

If we want assessment and accountability to be both rigorous and useful, a few guardrails matter. Keep tests lean and focused on standards. Report proficiency and growth so progress is visible event before targets are met. Deliver results quickly and with clear guidance for what to do next. Provide plain-language, disaggregated reporting so families can compare schools fairly. Offer teachers time and training to turn data into action.

With these principles in place, Missourians wouldn’t have to choose between accountability and good instruction. The SRSA pilot is a step toward a smarter system that respects classroom time, improves learning, and maintains the public’s right to know how schools are doing.

Eric Syverson is the Director of Policy and Research for Aligned, a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving education at the state level.