In Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and beyond, opponents of school choice have sought to force public school tests on private schools participating in school choice programs. While they’ve been thwarted for now, proponents of education choice should remain ready to defend assessment choice. It’s what lets a school’s own academic standard, not a borrowed one, be the standard it’s judged by.
Most recently, opponents of education freedom in Tennessee condemned a new state law letting students in the state’s Education Savings Account program to take a nationally standardized test instead of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. They decried ESA students’ underperformance on the TCAP and assert that not administering the public school test is to abandon the only legitimate measure of whether school choice works.
It isn’t, and Tennessee lawmakers were right to assert as much when they passed SB 1585.
Like all state assessments, TCAP is criterion-referenced to public school standards. In other words, it measures whether students have mastered a specific list of skills and academic content that the state government expects public school students to learn at a given grade level. These standards often prescribe what content and in what sequence students should be taught, and often align with a specific pedagogical model such as Common Core. They deeply influence instructional methods, from how multiplication is introduced in early grades to when students encounter certain literary forms.
But private schools are not required to follow those standards, and most don’t. In fact, one of the primary reasons families make use of school choice is to find a different academic approach. According to a 2026 EdChoice survey, the most common reason parents move their children from one school to another is unmet academic needs.
So, if students are placed in private schools that teach to different standards and in a different manner than the local public school, a low score on a state test doesn’t necessarily mean the school, student, or choice program failed. It is more likely that the test was an improper measuring stick.
Tennessee Republican state Sen. Jack Johnson made this point during debate over SB 1585, calling it “a mistake” to have required the TCAP because the exam is “not an accurate assessment for some private schools.”
None of this means ESA programs shouldn’t be measured. It means they should be measured well, and Arkansas shows what that looks like.
Arkansas’s Education Freedom Account program posted enrollment growth of 157% in its second year and at least 227% in its third, with a 91% year-over-year renewal rate. Each student in this growing cohort is required to take annually a nationally normed, nationally standardized assessment in English and math. Nationally standardized assessments are built on a different model than their state test peers. Rather than aligning with a particular curriculum or measuring mastery of a state’s public school standards, they measure academic proficiency against a broadly applicable set of skills and academic content. The scores on these tests then provide a reference point in comparison to the national student population taking that exam. Thus, the variety of competing national standardized tests provide a flexible and fair yardstick that can fit any curriculum a student’s school follows.
Based on this measure, Arkansas students are “performing at a level substantially higher than the national norm” in both math and reading, according to a study from University of Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf. At the same time, Wolf explained, the state’s expansive menu of assessment options ensures “testing freedom,” meaning schools choose assessments that fit their curriculum. This avoids what he calls “institutional isomorphism”: the risk of choice programs slowly forcing private schools to mimic their public peers. That risk isn’t theoretical.
A synthesis of 49 separate studies and a RAND Corporation analysis both found that teachers alter their classroom practices to align with the content students would see on exams. As David Coleman, the CEO of College Board, which makes the SAT, put it, “Teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force on this earth strong enough to prevent that.”
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There is a real conversation to be had about how to measure ESA program quality. However, as opponents of school choice realize they can’t kill ESAs, they will increasingly claim accountability can only be found through comparability to public schools. School choice proponents should realize these proposals for what they are: an attempt to use ESAs as a tool for educational homogeneity.
Treating public school exams as the sole yardstick for school choice programs that offer families a diversity of educational options defeats the purpose of school choice.
Jacob Hopkins is the state policy manager at Classic Learning Test.