The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has released a new report that explores the critical connection between education freedom and the availability of diverse assessment options for students and families.
The “Education Freedom Requires Assessment Choice” report delves into how standardized assessments when aligned with educational choice, can empower parents, foster innovation in schools, and improve student outcomes. With the growing national conversation around education reform and parental choice, this report provides valuable insights into creating a more flexible, student-centered education system.
Key highlights include:
An analysis of the current assessment landscape in the U.S.
Recommendations for integrating assessment options into educational choice policies and case studies demonstrate the impact of assessment choice on student success.
Jeremy Wayne Tate, who authored the AEI report, lists key areas where there can be improvement.
The benefits of school choice are constrained by narrow standardized testing options, which influence curriculum and teaching approaches. The testing choice will relieve educators of the burden of teaching to tests that do not meet their diverse approaches.
State policymakers should provide for a diverse suite of testing choices at the K–12 and college entrance levels.
Tates’ research shows the growth of education choices.
In 1996, 10,000 K–12 students participated in school choice programs. That number increased by over half a million in 23 years to 540,545 students in 2019. In the past five years, that number again increased by roughly half a million.
In January of 2024, a survey found that 72 percent of parents had considered a new school for their children in the past year.
As a result, alternatives to traditional public education are booming. From 2010 to 2021, the number of charter schools increased by 2,500, while the number of public schools decreased by 2,100. Public charter school enrollment skyrocketed over that time from 1.8 million to 3.7 million students.4 And the number of students residing in states that have enacted ESAs now stands at nearly 22 million.
But Tate says despite these heartening numbers, school choice can never be complete without also implementing testing choices. If schools are forced to administer rigid testing regimes and college-bound students must funnel through the same admissions test, families may be left with a menu of education locations that all must ultimately conform to the same standard.
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