I started covering the world of assessment policy in 2007, when No Child Left Behind—then five years old—was beginning to give governors heartburn over meeting adequate yearly progress. Back then, the debates centered around how to preserve the federal role in holding states accountable while also giving them flexibility in key areas, including assessment. In the decades since, we’ve witnessed the rise (and fall) of Common Core assessment consortia, the opt-out movement, state (and district) waivers and the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Today, we’re in the midst of waivers 2.0.
So, I was excited to take a walk down memory lane with our latest paper from our W/A Content Studio, “Modernizing Measurement: A Policy Primer for the Next Generation of Assessment,” which offers a brief history of assessment policy. As we note in the disclaimer, the goal was neither exhaustive nor prescriptive, but a “primer” that could be used to inform an assessment debate that, at the dawn of the AI era, looks very different than in years past.
Could not have come at a better time.
On April 15 and 16, the U.S. Department of Education convened state chiefs from across the country for a two-day summit focused on how the states might reimagine K-12 testing in ways that leverage technology to better inform instruction and drive academic improvement. (Some states took the chance to include assessment vendors as their “plus one.”)
I wasn’t in the room for the discussion, but it’s no secret that states are eager to identify alternatives to traditional, end-of-year, high-stakes tests that have dominated the assessment landscape for decades.
With increased federal flexibility—and technological advances—perhaps a future where assessments generate data that is more valuable to educators and take less valuable class instruction time is closer than it has been in years past.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift recently compared the continued use of 90s-era state tests with the clunky car phones we once bolted to our cars:
“But while mobile phones and Blackberries have long since replaced car phones, the world of education has clung to the same, outdated approach to testing,” Swift writes in The 74. “What’s worse, rather than replace the exams, states and districts …layered in more assessments… The goal was to generate more information that could be used immediately to inform instruction. The result, too often, has simply been more testing. At the risk of extending my car phone analogy too far, they bought and used fancy new iPhones while still paying for and insisting on using that old car phone when making calls on the road.”
Past efforts to modernize assessment to provide the type of real-time feedback that identifies gaps and allows for immediate course-corrections from teachers have largely failed. But according to experts from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Reagan Institute, who discussed assessment at a convening our team helped to lead this week, those barriers are largely gone.
If they’re right, the conditions are already in place for states and districts to adopt the type of “dynamic assessments” that policymakers have long imagined—ones that constantly gauge students growth and achievement, amassing enough insight to satisfy federal requirements over time without the cost and time necessary for annual end-of-year testing.
The foreword for the paper, written by Penny Schwinn, former Tennessee Commissioner of Education, and Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE+ASCD, showcases what’s possible when bold leadership, innovative technology, and a shared commitment to students meet this pivotal moment in American education. I hope you’ll check it out.
