ST. LOUIS (AP) – Several school superintendents in Missouri are organizing in a push to change standardized testing amid concerns that the current model fails to provide useful feedback on how much students are learning.

St. Louis Public Radio reports more than 40 superintendents have joined a group called the Missouri Assessment Partnership to work on developing a new way of handling performance exams.

Critics say standardized testing that escalated in the early 2000s under federal laws force districts to “teach to the test” in an effort to boost scores.

Missouri’s roughly 900,000 public school students take exams in the springs and districts see results the following autumn. Those results play a large role in a district’s annual performance report, which factors heavily into accreditation from the Missouri State Board of Education.