Parents don't seem to mind standardized tests, as long as the results only affect the teachers and schools. Make those tests count for their kids, put those tests in a position to keep their kids from getting into college, and you'll see the tests go bye-bye quickly. To Texas:
When the 2011 school year began, Texas high schoolers faced a barrage of new tests. Ninth- through 12th-graders had to take 15 standardized tests before they could graduate instead of four, more than any other state in the nation. STAAR also decreed that the new tests would account for 15 percent of graduating seniors’ grades.
Testing had remained viable with politicians and parents in large part because it seemed to be about improving the performance of troubled schools, holding teachers and administrators accountable for the quality of their students’ education and ensuring that high school seniors deserved a diploma. But now it was going to affect the resumes of college-bound seniors.
...When the 2013 legislative session opened, however, [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness backer Senator Florence] Shapiro had retired. Speaker of the House Joe Straus said, “To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing — the Texas House has heard you.”
A new version of the STAAR rollback swept through the Senate and the House with only three dissenting votes. It went into conference so that the Senate and House versions could be attuned, and passed again Sunday night [Mark Schone, "Enough! Facing backlash from parents, Texas cuts back on student testing," NBC: Open Channel, 2013.05.27].
Schone notes that Texas began the push for more testing back in 1979. H. Ross Perot chaired a Texas task force in 1983 that recommended more tests, as well as "smaller class sizes, higher teacher pay and higher standards for students." According to Schone, Texas in the 1990s increased K-12 funding and teacher pay, which could have had as much to do with the "Texas Miracle" which helped George W. Bush win the Presidency and motivated his No Child Left Behind.
South Dakota seems never to have paid attention to those other recommendations from Texas. Even as we waiver out of test-centric No Child Left Behind, we create a whole new regime of standardized tests for Common Core, which lowers standards (see also here, here, and here). And we still do nothing to reduce class sizes or bring South Dakota's teacher pay up from last in the nation. Tests are a lot cheaper than teachers, so we keep testing, and producing less-skilled students:
Further, most of the tests being used consist primarily or solely of multiple-choice items, which are cheaper to develop, administer, and score than are tests that include constructed responses such as essays. Even when a state has tests that include writing, the level of writing required for such tests often does not demand that higher-level thinking be demonstrated, nor does it require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure. Thus, students arriving in our high school lacked experience and knowledge about how to do the kinds of writing that are expected at higher levels of education [Kenneth Bernstein, "Warnings from the Trenches," Academe, Jan/Feb 2013].
Shifting from No Child Left Behind to Common Core hasn't changed South Dakota's test-focused approach to K-12 education. That erroneous focus is making kids less ready for law school and any other challenge demanding good writing and critical thinking. Whatever standards we profess, we need to follow Texas away from those tests and let teachers teach.
Update 21:59 MDT: Josh Verges of that Sioux Falls paper responds via blog that the Smarter Balanced consortium is building online Common Core tests for South Dakota that will include much more than multiple-choice questions. This state-led consortium is preparing formative assessments that we will get to administer to our kids throughout the school year. Yay.