To the delight of campaigners and some parents, COVID-19 has put a wrench in school exams. With support from the previous administration, all 50 states cancelled accountability testing last March, freeing 51 m public-school pupils from the annual arrangement. The SATs optional essay-writing section and separate subject tests were discontinued this year. The Programme for International Student Assessment and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have been postponed too. With opposition for years against standardized testing in public schools, could this be the end?

On February 22nd the current administration said exams had to take place, but that the results would not be used to grade schools. Ordinarily the federal government obliges states to hold schools accountable for their pupils’ test scores. Schools with poor results may see their budgets reduced, as part of that exchange of exam results for dollars. Some states have used results to close schools and fire teachers. Teachers in tough places often think it unfair. And COVID-19 has strengthened the point that much of what goes into a test score is, frankly, well beyond the control of teachers.

Abandoning testing could be disastrous, warns the Fordham Institute in a recent report. Cancelling tests again would make it hard to know how schools fared during the pandemic. “I would be in favour of more effort to get as many kids as possible tested, so that we know what is going on,” explains Cory Koedel, who co-wrote the report. “I think some kids are actually probably doing OK, but some are terrible. And I don’t think we know exactly who’s who.” Others disagree. Derek Briggs of the University of Colorado questions the benefit of testing students during these trying times. “All students are going to need some serious help over the next year to make up for what’s been a pretty tough time,” he says.

That thought delights those parents and teachers who have been waging war against standardized exams for years. The Opt Out movement gained national attention in 2015 because some families in New York State refused the exams. Thirteen states received warning letters from the Obama administration for failing to test about 95% of pupils that same year. The activists in the Opt Out movement want to see others held responsible for student learning, not just teachers. “The notion that we can ascertain…the extent to which pupils are doing poorly as a function of what’s happening in schools, as opposed to everything else that’s going on in their lives right now is absurd,” says Daniel Koretz of Harvard’s School of Education.

One compromise would be for a representative sample of children to sit the tests. One group could be selected to take maths and American history, while another group took English and science. Each group would take two exams, the burden of testing would be reduced, but schools and the government would gain reliable information on four subjects, at least.

Daniel Koretz maintains that__________.