For our inaugural post on Education Currents, Waypoint’s Kate Poteet makes the case for holding the line on standards-based assessments. She examines Texas House Bill 4, which proposes replacing the state’s STAAR exam with shorter, norm-referenced tests. While appealing on the surface, Kate explains that peer-to-peer comparisons can’t show whether students are truly meeting grade-level expectations—leaving whole schools at risk of falling behind without being identified for support.

The piece also highlights the work of several of our partners—Harvard’s Education Recovery Scorecard, the Collaborative for Student Success, Learning Heroes, the U.S. Chamber Foundation, and the Bipartisan Policy Center—who are helping make assessment data more transparent and actionable for families, communities, and policymakers.

With Education Currents, we’re launching a space to share insights from our team and our partners on the policy, data, and advocacy issues that matter most. This first entry sets the tone: rigorous standards and honest reporting are non-negotiable if every student is to get the education they deserve.