Dive Brief:
-
State standardized assessment results shouldn't be used for high-stakes consequences for schools and students. Rather, testing should focus on student and school performance to guide improvements tied to high standards, a FutureEd report recommends.
-
Currently, statewide assessments serve two incompatible roles — informing accountability decisions that “requires high levels of test security, comparability, and a focus on a single, year-end score” versus informing instruction and measuring individual student performance by being closely connected to students’ daily learning, the report said.
-
FutureEd proposes several alternate approaches, including the use of shorter state assessments to provide summative results in exchange for better, standards-aligned formative assessments to track individual student progress.
Dive Insight:
The report does not promote abandoning state standardized assessments but challenges what it calls the testing system's "competing priorities." Its solution would result in less testing but greater capacity to gather data about individual student performance, as well as information for schools about areas for improvements to instruction, the report said.
"The heart of the problem is that different stakeholders want state tests to serve two different, equally legitimate, and largely incompatible roles," the report said.
Statewide testing has become so hyper-focused on accountability that it has led to pushback and calls to remove testing provisions from federal law, the report said. The criticism includes that the state standardized tests take time away from teaching, and that the scores come too late in the school year for teachers and families to intervene based on results.
The Every Student Succeeds Act — also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, last updated by Congress in 2015 — mandates that states give:
-
Annual statewide assessments in reading/language arts and math for all students in grades 3-8.
-
One statewide assessment in reading/language arts and math for high school students.
-
Assessments once in each grade span in science for all students.
-
Annual English language proficiency assessments for all English learners in K-12.
An alternate approach to current testing methods mentioned in the report is the use of through-year assessments, which are multiple shorter assessments given throughout the school year that can provide both a summative score and information on individual student progress. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education updated guidance for the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority — a program that allows states to pilot new assessment approaches, including the use of through-year assessments.
However, FutureEd's report said it is not clear yet if through-year assessments will lead to less testing time overall. Additionally, it's been challenging to produce summative scores and to make sure these are not viewed as high-stakes.
"The competing priorities — the production of aggregate information for accountability versus detailed information for improvement — have caused high-quality tests developed at substantial cost to be attacked by critics and abandoned by states, spawned new testing initiatives that have struggled to address both roles of testing simultaneously, and paralyzed the national discussion on ways to teach students to higher levels in a post-pandemic era when that work is critical," the report said.
The report also notes that civil rights, equity and parent advocacy groups have been reluctant to abandon state assessment accountability systems due to the lack of alternatives, especially ones that ensure underserved student populations "are not falling through the cracks."
“I don’t want to give up on 3 to 8 testing until we have a roadmap or indicators that are going to produce the information that we need to be able to drive resources, or drive diagnostics, in a way that meets the needs of different levels of the system,” said Education Trust President Denise Forte, in the FutureEd report.
At the Reagan Institute Summit on Education, held in Washington, D.C., on May 23, several state education superintendents spoke about the importance of assessment data to hold schools accountable for student performance.
Kirsten Baesler, North Dakota’s state superintendent, acknowledged the contention around statewide assessments.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on state leaders, on state education leaders, to roll back the assessment piece of our accountability to measure other things, and I just, I can’t do that in North Dakota,” Baesler said, adding that other state education leaders are in agreement.
