Sam Wineburg is one of the brains behind the amazing website Digital Inquiry Group (which used to be called the Stanford History Education Group). The team behind DIG produces high-quality lesson plans for social studies teachers that focus on inquiry and expose students to a variety of primary and secondary sources. Their lessons also emphasize that there can be multiple views about what has happened in the past. I have happily used their lessons for years.

A few years ago I read Wineburg’s excellent book Why Learn History. The quote below resonated because it gets to an issue that the public, and many educators, aren’t familiar with. Namely, that the folks who make the tests are constantly redefining what counts, which makes the tests a bit less helpful than they could be. In Oregon, students’ knowledge of social studies content isn’t really tested. Certainly, if students are taking AP exams, they are taking standardized exams written by the College Board. However, as a veteran educator, I don’t put a lot of trust in their test results. The main reason for this is that test scores can yo-yo from year to year, even though what and how I teach isn’t all that different from year to year.

Moving the goal posts leads to another issue. When students demonstrate mastery of a particular skill or fact, that item might vanish from the test, not because it’s unimportant, but because assessors want to maintain a spread of scores. That practice means success can feel like it gets punished—today’s knowledge may not even register tomorrow. At the same time, it’s worth noting that there are moments when standards are lowered, which is an entirely different problem. Lowering expectations masks gaps rather than addressing them, creating a false sense of progress. Between shifting targets on one end and diluted benchmarks on the other, it’s little wonder that educators, parents, and the public often struggle to trust what standardized scores actually tell us.

On top of that, when I think about my own teaching, it is an absolute fact that I have gotten better as my career has continued. I’d say the quality of teaching generally is better than what one would have found broadly twenty-five years ago. We just know more about good instruction. Yet, the news and ‘scores’ don’t always reflect it.

At the end of the day, as both a teacher and a parent, I don’t put too much weight into test scores. I’m not opposed to standardized tests, but I try to keep in mind Wineburg’s point, that there are reasons, often hidden, that weaken their ability to inform.