Fyi... State Assessments may be predictive of future academic success, if only recent, biased studies are to be believed, but not based on 5 decades of data before now, nor are they predictive of success in life or careers.
There are many reasons they fail as a litmus test outside of narrow academic settings.
Some of the biggest reasons are that they don't teach to or measure adaptability, nor measure creativity in solving problems, or indicate any level of persistence in the face of adversity. They produce drones in other words that are meant to fit within a pegged system, rather than leaders who can solve critical problems and reason through tough situations and circumstances.
Public schools teach "to the test" and have done so for over 40 years. The narrow scope of this education is perfect for indoctrination rather than truly developing an independent, objective, and intelligent mind. It is easily manipulated by simple memorization, which takes little effort at all, but ideally suits someone just wanting a job instead of a career or entrepreneurship.
It is meant to churn out more hive minded people to make the colony grow, but once the colony becomes overcrowded there is a huge die off in terms of employable drones. That's where we are now. The system cannot sustain itself because of natural limits to production and usefulness of people who all perform the same function for too long.
Private schools do not "teach to the tests" because they are busy teaching reasoning and independent thought. Many are teaching the classical education model that gave us the enlightenment and industrial revolution, as well as the robust economy of this country before the 60s led to the destruction of education itself. The last people to be trained classically in public schools graduated in the early to mid 1980s, when several people I knew first hand began teaching. Things got much worse from there and rapidly.
Classical education values a well-rounded pursuit of knowledge that doesn't discount history, literature, and reason. It's a rigorous curriculum that isn't defined by dittos and scantron tests, but essays, reports, and papers/presentations starting in elementary school. The truth of private education is that not everyone that starts out in private schools can afford to continue through high school because of costs, location inconvenience, and extra-curricular limitations that put an economic strain on families already subsidizing public education as well.
If you exclude students who have attended private schools before the high school level, you will see a drop from the upper ranks of high school graduates and statist-preferred testing measurements. There are at least 3 schools in Lexington that I know of personally whose students take the assessments and on average perform more than 10-15% greater than the average of those one or two grades higher in public schools.
They don't need to publish the results because they don't need the marketing, and they know the classical approach is too rigorous for some to take on. It's definitely too expensive for most, but more so for those in lower income brackets without some sort of voucher system. But that's the idea behind preventing vouchers. It's to keep the lower income brackets from escaping that perpetual motion machine of poverty that has ZERO accountability.
Private school teachers that don't perform their jobs well get FIRED. Can't say that about public schools AT ALL.
Most of yall knew all of this, of course, but for those who don't, you're welcome for the cognitive dissonance disruption.
