matter of need,” Pérez said. Boston College’s National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy has placed the value of the standardized testing market between $400 and $700 million. Parents spent $13.1 billion on test preparation in 2015, and the College Board, which creates and administers the SAT and AP exams, boasted a revenue of $1.2 billion in 2020. “The purpose of standardized tests is to make money, so I don’t know that that whole system can shift that much. When wealthier white kids do better on these tests, that’s good for them because those are the people that are going to pay for the test, those are the parents who are going to spend the money on a TI-84 (calculator). There’s no point in owning a TI84 anymore except for taking the AP exam and other standardized tests, because Desmos is a much better graphing calculator than the TI-84,” Morgan said. COVID-19 didn’t just uproot the college prep exams. Spring 2020 Milestones were cancelled. After being twice denied of waiving the Spring 2021 exams, State Superintendent Richard Woods designated the Milestones as optional, and EOCs weighed just .01% of final grades. Communication thus far indicates that Georgia students will revert back to the traditional Milestones this Spring. Pérez worries this decision might overlook lingering effects of virtual learning. “At the beginning of the school year we were operating under the assumption that everything was back to normal. We had to adjust and realize that COVID is very much still with us,” Pérez said. “I think going back to the 20% on the state’s end is in some ways a failure to recognize that we’re still in a pandemic, and that we’re still dealing with the learning losses. It isn’t considerate or sensitive
to that reality.” Junior Destiny Strickland has suffered from test anxiety throughout her educational career. Though she appreciates testing for its feedback, reduced weight for the EOC would account for students like her. “Testing has definitely made me realize the things I should spend more time on, but it has also affected my esteem and grades. If I fail a test it makes me overthink,” Strickland said. “Last year was hard for me being online, so the fact that it didn’t count as much gave me some relief. This year may be stressful considering it weighs more and will affect your grade for better or for worse.” Meghan Frick, Director of Communications for the Georgia Department of Educa-
disruptions due to the pandemic, GADOE urges interpreters to use a grain of salt when analyzing scores. GADOE is working to address learning gaps from last year, according to Frick. The content will not be different, but districts have been provided with tools to help students catch up, including formative assessments to predict Milestones scores, new Academic Recovery Specialists to assist school leaders, more summer and afterschool programs and federal relief funds specifically for remediating learning loss. Students of color were on average most impaired by COVID-19. In Fall 2020, after less than a year of virtual learning, students in school districts that predominantly serve students of color scored just 59% of the historical average in math and 77% of the historical average in reading on the iReady diagnostic examinations. McKinsey & Company estimates that students of color lost 12 to 16 months of mathematics learning from March 2020 to June 2021, whereas white students lost five to nine. Now, with Milestones returning to their full gravity, a concern arises: how CCSD students — already disadvantaged and likely to have learning gaps — will test this year and in those to come. “It’s just going to get worse. These effects are only going to become more and more prevalent as the people who were elementary online eventually get to high school and start taking standardized tests,” Whitford said. “The tests are just going to display learning gaps that we have as a school, as a county, as a nation.”
“You’re basically saying a two hour test given one time is supposed to be valid data instead of the performance of a kid over 18 weeks.” -Bryan Moore, English Department tion (GADOE), says while the state would be willing to request to waive federal testing requirements, “it is unlikely the same administration that declined last year’s waiver request would approve one this year — so we have to be prepared to administer the test.” The portion of CCSD students who opted to take the Spring 2021 EOCs ranged from 2% of U.S. history students to 49% of students taking physical science, the majority of which were advanced 8th graders who had been in-person more consistently than high schoolers. Students across Georgia showed a decrease in scores in most subjects. While this decline could be attributed to learning
Infographic by Violet Calkin and Megan Wise
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