Why I don't like school choice advocates bringing up test scores

I recently posted about what kinds of arguments I would like to see from school choice advocates. My issues aren't always with what people could be saying but aren't. What about arguments they are making but shouldn't?

An obvious example would be the overly aggressive accusations of grooming. A lot of people are tying everything related to gender or sexuality to grooming. This makes it easy for people to simply dismiss these arguments. Grooming is a serious problem in schools, but overuse of the term has made it far too easy to brush aside legitimate accusations.

If you look at the title of this post, there's obviously another example for arguments that I would like school choice advocates to scale back. I have never been a fan of using test scores as a measure for school performance.

A lot of this can be connected to a concept that I call the intelligence trap. People like to think they are intelligent. If a commonly accepted measure shows that you are intelligent, you are likely to accept it regardless of validity. In the case of IQ testing, we are looking at an imperfect measure of a subset of a subset of a subset of an opinion.

In the case of standardized tests, we are looking at a measure that can be influenced by such things as hunger or a lack of sleep. They can't ask every question possible within a subject. They don't even test every subject available. They also focus on right-or-wrong questions, completely neglecting the bulk of mental development that should be occurring. These tests don't even try to measure how well someone forms beliefs, thoughts, and opinions. On top of all that, what qualifies as a quality education is highly subjective. Standardized tests provide an imperfect measure of a subset of a subset of a subset of an opinion.

Standardized tests address a miniscule amount of the mental development that should be occurring during school years, which is why I never bother to actually look at these studies. They were also created for conventional schools. As I have repeatedly stated, no innovative school will ever outperform a conventional school at being a conventional school. Although the measures aren't built around how conventional a school is, innovative schools are at a distinct disadvantage.

What if a school focuses on the development of practical ability instead of test-taking skills? What if a school cares more about developing the ability to think than answering questions the way we want? What if a school allows much broader offerings at the expense of the handful of subjects tested? All of these things can harm test scores. What these schools do better does not get captured at all.

Perhaps the worst part of this is not what they’re missing today. Arguments about test scores can undermine the very purpose of choice. If schools know they are going to be judged by test scores, they will conform. Because these scores were built around conventional schooling, they will embrace conventional values themselves. Schools will fear the consequences of deviating from these measures. Pretty much all schools end up the same. What's the point of school choice if all schools are the same?

It gets even worse when the government gets to control these measures, which is common. Tests do change over time, and the government can always skew measures to better match perceived strengths of their schools. As a result, there is a ton of potential for these measures that make choice look good to suddenly make the government-controlled model look better. This also means that the government can push conformity to government standards, giving the government the power to control the private sector.

What I would like to see from school choice advocates

I have long insisted that most people would learn best outside the confines of a restrictive schooling environment. I prefer educational choice over school choice. Growing up in the government-controlled model of schooling, however, I have to say any choice is better than no choice. This means that I am generally on the same side as school choice advocates. School choice advocates have made a number of good points, but I feel they are falling well short of what I would like to see from them.

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