O’Scanlon: NJEA is Right, Cancel Standardized Testing this Year

Senator Declan O’Scanlon called for Governor Murphy to listen to the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) in their request to suspend for standardized testing to be suspended this year.

“The Governor should suspend standardized testing for this year. We appropriately canceled it last year and there is no difference this year,” said O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth). “There is nothing ‘standardized’ about this year. The NJEA is correct. Let’s agree where we can and start here! The entire concept behind standardized testing is to assess students’ progress year over year. That assessment applies to real and consistent instruction, not aberrations like we are experiencing right now.”

The NJEA, New Jersey Association of School Administrators (NJASA), and New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association (NJPSA) issued a joint statement last week on the need for full suspension of standardized testing; not just a delay.

“Due to extenuating circumstances of remote learning, the rare examples of in-person learning, and so many of the variable versions of hybrid learning, there is simply no way anyone can call what’s happening in education right now … standard. And there’s no way we can compare these past 18 months to any period in education prior to this.

“There is already such limited teaching time all around but in-person instruction is tragically, still unnecessarily, being limited. We need to focus that limited time on learning rather than wasting presently precious time on testing which won’t be relevant anyway. We need to stop. We need to hit reset. And we need to embrace when the teachers’ union is right. Now is one of those times,” O’Scanlon concluded.