The President said *what* about standardized testing?

The headlines say things like "PRESIDENT CANCELS ALL TESTING FOR SPRING"

The key phrase here? "Trump says"
This isn't the case.

No, he didn't.
Seriously, folks, stop trying to get anything real out of those news conferences when he is speaking. It's more serious than if we're going to have MCAS; he's going to get people killed.

Yesterday, U.S. Ed issued the following guidance to states:

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced today students impacted by school closures due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic can bypass standardized testing for the 2019-2020 school year. Upon a proper request, the Department will grant a waiver to any state that is unable to assess its students due to the ongoing national emergency, providing relief from federally mandated testing requirements for this school year.

Emphasis mine: states HAVE TO REQUEST the waiver for ESSA-required testing. It goes on to add:

To protect students' health and safety, a state that deems it necessary should proceed with cancelling its statewide assessments for the 2019-2020 school year. Since student performance, as measured by assessments, is required to be used in statewide accountability systems, any state that receives a one-year waiver may also receive a waiver from the requirement that this testing data be used in the statewide accountability system due to the national emergency.

So it's a two-fer. It's actually a really simple form.

This does NOT, by the way, have any impact on non-ESSA required testing, like SAT, AP, ACT.

Okay, so then we file the form and we're set, right? Well, no.
First, we don't know that Massachusetts has actually filed for this.

Second, testing of students in grades 4, 8, and 10 is written into Mass General Law. Specifically, it's MGL Ch. 69, section 1l:

...comprehensive diagnostic assessment of individual students shall be conducted at least in the fourth, eighth and tenth grades. Said diagnostic assessments shall identify academic achievement levels of all students in order to inform teachers, parents, administrators and the students themselves, as to individual academic performance.

That, thus, would need to be suspended: unless the Governor intends to expand his emergency powers so far (I'm thinking no?), both chambers of the Legislature need to pass a bill and the Governor needs to sign in.
We should note that this DOES NOT, as much as they tend to be the first on our minds, impact graduation, which isn't written into the law, save for any seniors remaining who may have been trying to take and pass a make-up science, math, or ELA test this spring in hopes of passing to graduate.
That, I should note, would be a regulatory change, which is under the purview of the Board of Ed, though the Governor has already once, with his suspension of the days in school, set aside a state education regulation.

Even if the tenth grade MCAS gets cancelled this year, I'll observe, there's nothing to prevent the state from simply continuing to require it and just rescheduling all the tenth graders as juniors. I also realize that this observation isn't going to be popular, but I think it's in the realm of possibility.

And seriously: get your information on this--on anything!--from someone other than the President.