How Standardized Testing Failed Students
Moving beyond No Child Left Behind
I have watched American education from nearly every seat in the house. The daughter of a public school teacher, I became a public school teacher myself. Later I advanced to teach in university classrooms and served as a PTA officer at my children’s school.
From each of those vantage points, I have watched a profession I love evolve into something almost unrecognizable. I am concerned about the current attacks on the US Department of Education and legal protections for diverse learners. But I am also cautiously optimistic about the opportunity we have to reimagine learning environments for modern students.
When Congress passed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, the goals were well intentioned. Lawmakers wanted every child, regardless of zip code or family income, to read and do math at grade level, and they wanted the achievement gap between rich and poor, white and non-white, closed for good.
But by choosing to measure these achievement gaps with annual standardized testing tied to funding and sanctions, Congress reshaped classrooms in ways the bill’s architects did not fully anticipate. Schools began “teaching to the test,” narrowing instruction toward reading and math while trimming time for science, social studies, art, and recess.
Critics on the left and right eventually agreed that the law intruded on state and local control because it imposed unfunded mandates on already-strained districts and treated teachers less as trained professionals and more as scripted technicians.
I felt that shift from the front of my own classroom. Twenty-five years later, the good intentions of our legislators have produced cookie-cutter classrooms and a generation of teachers who entered the field to nurture curiosity and instead were measured by a number on a benchmark test. No Child Left Behind’s promise, in practice, left behind the very professionals it needed most.
A harder moment, not an easier one
If the last two decades were defined by standardization, this one is defined by disruption, and it is arriving from every direction at once. Artificial intelligence tools are moving into classrooms faster than schools can write policies around them. Children are growing up with screens competing for their attention nearly from birth. Parenting culture has trended toward closer supervision and less unstructured independence, even as employers say they need young workers who can solve problems without being told exactly how. Entire industries are being reshaped by automation, and the pipeline from school to career no longer runs reliably through a four-year degree.
Layered on top of all this is a federal rebuke of public education itself. Since 2025, the executive branch has moved to shrink and, where possible, dismantle the US Department of Education, transferring more than a hundred federal programs to other agencies and cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in the research contracts that once told us what schools and families actually need. Dr. Casey Burgat recently wrote about these dangers here at The Preamble.
We can stand and point fingers of blame, but this is the environment in which we now have to raise, and educate, the next generation. We cannot return to the standardized, one-size-fits-all model NCLB offered, but we also cannot waste another day paralyzed by indecision.
I will quickly outline four of the most critical gaps that need to be closed in public education. Our future leaders are growing up quickly, and we need today’s leaders to bring real solutions to the table.
1. Start earlier, and start closer to work
Nearly a third of the American workforce is raising young children, and the lack of affordable, quality child care costs the economy an estimated $172 billion a year in forgone earnings, lower productivity, and job turnover. Employers already have a financial incentive to help solve this, and an expanded federal tax credit for employer-sponsored child care now allows companies to claim up to 40% of what they spend on it. States and school districts should partner aggressively with major employers to build early childhood centers on site or nearby, giving parents safe, developmentally appropriate care within reach of their workday, and giving children a genuine runway to kindergarten readiness.
The cost of living almost necessitates dual-income homes to cover a family’s living costs. When health care costs as much as a mortgage, and daycare costs the same as a single income, many parents face an impossible choice between barely scraping by through honest work and utilizing government programs to house and feed their children. Investing tax dollars in early-childhood-development centers is an economic and an education policy at once.
2. Allow public schools to differ
Uniformity was the whole premise of the NCLB era, and it is a premise we should retire. More than 500 public schools nationwide now operate Montessori programs, in which students have a degree of freedom to follow their own interests. Districts from Milwaukee, MN, to Longview, TX, have shown that families will choose Montessori instruction, nature-based programs (which emphasize outdoor learning), or STEAM education (which includes the arts along with science, technology, engineering, and math) when public schools actually offer them. Expanding choice within public districts lets teachers practice the pedagogy they were trained for and helps families find a model that fits their child.
Combined with attention to equitable access rather than just proximity to affluent neighborhoods, this kind of choice can strengthen public education instead of hollowing it out (as vouchers do, by diverting funds from public schools to private ones). All children are unique and learn in unique ways. Parents in both rural and urban areas want to trust that their children are in the best possible learning environment.
3. Follow the brain science
The beauty of alternative classroom settings is supported by developments in modern brain science.
We know a remarkable amount now about how children actually acquire language, learn to read, and build cognitive skills. Phonemic awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in words, is one of the strongest known predictors of reading success. Unfortunately, speech, occupational, and physical therapies that strongly support building phonemic skills are chronically underfunded in public schools.
Early childhood (ages 0–3) is also when the brain is most efficient at acquiring new languages, which argues for introducing foreign language instruction far earlier than the middle or high school years, as most districts currently do. Research on screen time consistently shows that passive, solitary screen use is linked to worse cognitive and behavioral outcomes, while unstructured, exploratory play builds the reasoning and problem-solving skills children need most. Providing more after-school enrichment opportunities, establishing ”bike buses” (in which children ride bikes to school together), and increasing the availability of brain-based interventions for our youngest learners struggling to read: none of this requires new discoveries. It requires funding for schools and supports for teachers that we have chosen, so far, not to provide.
4. Build real bridges to work
The old assumption that every student should be pointed toward a four-year degree has never matched the economy we actually have, and it matches it even less today than it did in 2001. Youth apprenticeships, which combine paid work-based learning with classroom instruction, served over 415,000 young people last year, and states from California to Tennessee are now investing tens of millions of dollars to expand them beyond their traditional home in construction trades and into health care, technology, and other growing fields. High schools should expand access to these programs and to entry-level licensing pathways for careers that pay handsome salaries and help many students avoid crushing debt from education loans.
Just as important, we owe students hard assignments they might fail. Resilience and belief in one’s capacity to achieve goals are so much more than soft skills. They are character traits that are some of the most important qualities employers seek in young job applicants. The future of education will continue to change rapidly with the growth of large language (AI) models and an information age that threatens the relevance of the classroom. When graduates enter the workforce, they are a liability unless their interpersonal skills offline are as strong as their technical skills online.
A positive angle in an uncertain time
As a fierce defender of public education, I find hope in believing that states can pivot their school models and curriculum standards more quickly than the machine of federal government can. Our nation has always protected a market for innovation, and that principle should apply in public education as well.
Employer-linked early learning, real choice inside public schools, brain-science-informed instruction, and genuine career pathways are all achievable with the will to fund and implement them. They collectively reject the premise that a single test score, a single curriculum, or a single path to adulthood can serve every child equally well. No Child Left Behind was right that we owe every student the same shot at success. It was simply wrong about how to deliver it.
Now, with the federal government stepping back and our most vulnerable students still at risk, it falls to all of us (state leaders, local boards, and parents willing to show up) to build something better.
Dr. Lauren Pinkston is an independent candidate for governor of Tennessee. A seventh-generation Tennessean, former business ethics professor, wife to a family physician, and mother of four, she holds a Ph.D. in international family and community studies from Clemson University and writes at The Mindful Middle. Learn more at pinkstonfortn.com
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