Testing what is taught, when it's taught
It’s testing season again: that time of year when schools switch to test prep and begin to administer the state standards-aligned assessments. The purpose of these assessments is to understand student, school and system progress against college and career ready standards that prepare all students to succeed; the hope is that schools can use the data to make positive changes in teaching and learning for the next year. The tests themselves are fairly short (typically 2-3 hours per subject area), but they cast a much longer shadow. Along with the important purpose these tests serve, students and educators experience some unintended consequences, such as the slow return of results to families and schools (some states return results in a few days; others take months) and score reports laden with dense statistical data and too little usable information. Local implementation decisions that take valuable time away from learning include test prep that is divorced from the important instructional content students need to succeed on the test and testing administration procedures that shut down all teaching and learning for full days to several days.?
Some states are showing that there’s a better way to meet the same goal while reducing these side effects. End of year state summative tests are not set up to support educators to improve instruction in the current school year. There are better ways. At least 13 states are in varying stages of developing, piloting and implementing some form of “through-year assessments.” At their core, through-year assessments differ from states’ traditional summative assessments by measuring student performance multiple times over the school year, instead of during a single sitting close to the end of the year. Through-year assessments can address long-standing concerns about the challenges of traditional end-of-year summative assessments.?
Some states are doing more than administering the end of year test in chunks during the school year. States like Louisiana and Montana, for example, are attempting to create a more coherent system for teachers and schools in which assessments are more closely connected to high-quality curriculum. These states are choosing to deepen the connection between assessment and instructional content, while preserving local flexibility and agency around curricular choice and the pacing of instruction. Through-year assessment systems are more equitable when they strengthen the connection between assessment and instruction—“testing what is taught, when it’s taught.”
Switching to through-year assessments isn’t easy and these are not a new, shiny, magical wand that will fix all problems or concerns about testing. Through-year assessments bring their own logistical challenges that states will have to solve.?But through-year assessments can be more valuable, more relevant to and equitable for students.?
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"Our goal is that our through-year model will support a formative assessment process that directly informs classroom teacher and student progress and growth, with immediacy of feedback. The new assessments are specifically designed to allow districts to flexibly align testing with local scope and sequence that ensures students are assessed on what they have been taught.
This new assessment system returns time to the teacher classroom, provides an assessment model where the formative, usable assessment results aid the teacher, student and family on the learning continuum. The new assessment system uses the formative assessments to provide a summative assessment without more testing and more time away from student learning. This model makes good sense, and we are excited to be fully engaged in this work for our Montana students.”
—Elsie Arntzen, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Montana
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1 年I have long advocated going back to preassessments before starting the year and a unit, which can be done at a local level and according to how the teacher had planned curriculum. However, through the year assessments will only be valuable with a complete culture shift in teaching. For districts that grade based on student effort and metrics other than evaluating work with objective grades based on factual demonstration of knowledge and skills, they will fail to use the valuable analytics to see where students are less proficient. Many teachers lack the critical analysis skills needed to make necessary changes based on solid testing data and lack the analytic skills necessary to determine whether testing is valid and reliable or culturally inequitable/biased. Before any of this is implemented, districts should have mandated funding for data analytics administrator positions, whose role is to analyze, train, and support teachers developing stronger curriculum, and identifying students that would benefit from better targeted 504 and IEPs.