In a new series, the Center for American Progress examines how assessments in public schools can become effective instruments that help to measure whether schools and educators are meeting the goals of education. It considers how assessments are designed and how their results are used and understood, and emphasizes that when done purposefully, these tests Read more about The Future of Testing in Education[…]
Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff, and Timothy Daly recently published a CALDER working paper titled, “Assessing the Accuracy of Elementary School Test Scores as Predictors of Students’ High School Outcomes.” They employ datasets from Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Washington to track sixteen cohorts of students from third grade through high school, enabling them to investigate how Read more about Predicting Students’ Academic Trajectory from Third Grade Test Scores[…]
New data from researchers at Stanford, based on some 300 million elementary-school test scores across more than 11,000 school districts, reveals the school districts where children are showing the most growth. The results do not follow conventional wisdom. Districts with high growth are scattered across the country, in contrast with sharp geographic divisions on proficiency Read more about School Districts where Students Learn Most[…]
Achieve has released an online tracking tool that summarizes components of states’ accountability plans as submitted to the U.S. Department of Education under the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The tool also allows for users to compare states’ accountability metrics. As part of ESSA, every state was required to create and submit Read more about New Online Tracker Shows How States Will Hold Schools Accountable Under ESSA[…]
The Behavioral Science and Policy Association recently published Reimagining Accountability in K–12 Education. This paper reviews the extensive behavioral science literature that shows outcome-based accountability, commonly used in education, is only one of multiple forms of accountability that should be considered for new accountability structures. Author Brian Gill recently commented on the paper in the Read more about Redefining Accountability to Treat Educators like the Professionals they Are[…]
The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings has released the 16th annual Brown Center Report (BCR) on American Education by Tom Loveless. The 2017 BCR investigates three issues that are relevant to the current dialogue on U.S. education. Part I analyzes the changing scores of American students on two international tests; Part II revisits Read more about How well are American Students Learning?[…]
This blog has written previously about the much-touted edTPA teacher licensing exam, which promises to serve as a “bar exam” for teachers. The goal of this performance assessment is to set the bar higher for teacher certification and to be able to provide accountability across state lines and among teacher certification programs and schools. However, Read more about States Set Varying Passing Bars on New Teaching Exam[…]
The revised version of the SAT college entrance exam won’t be offered until March, but students can start preparing for it with a new, free online study program affiliated with the test. The College Board and Khan Academy are announcing a new partnership offering free online test preparation resources for students looking to take a Read more about College Board, Khan Academy team up to offer free SAT prep program[…]
A new report by the education reform organization Achieve finds large “honesty gaps” between state-reported proficiency rates in math and reading compared to those on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card. The report, Proficient vs. Prepared: Disparities Between State Tests and the 2013 National Assessment Read more about Achieve Report Highlights “Honesty Gaps” in More than Half of States’ Student Proficiency Ratings[…]
The PARCC Governing Board, made up of the state education commissioners and superintendents, voted recently to consolidate the two PARCC testing windows into one and to reduce total test time by about 90 minutes beginning in the 2015-16 school year. The vote came in response to school district and teacher feedback during the first year Read more about PARCC States Vote to Shorten Test Time and Simplify Test Administration[…]
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments are the product of a testing consortium attempting to provide 21st century testing to measure 21st century skills. Here is PARCC’s own description of their role: PARCC is your state’s homegrown assessment. PARCC is not a testing company – it’s a group of Read more about PARCC Releases Practice Tests for all Grade Levels[…]
Members of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools said recently they will work to decrease the number of tests students take in elementary and secondary schools. The groups will form a task force to identify and eliminate unnecessary assessments. In a survey of its 67 member Read more about Do students take too many tests in their school career?[…]
The PARCC ELA/literacy prose constructed response item rubrics have been updated with the help of educators across PARCC states to reflect lessons learned from the PARCC field test. A PCR item asks students to produce a robust written reply to a prompt. The rubrics are a voluntary resource, aligned to the CCSS, and designed to Read more about PARCC Releases Updated ELA Rubrics for Prose Constructed Responses[…]
Earlier this summer, Achieve launched the Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts, a new tool to help school district leaders to take stock of how many assessments are administered throughout a school year and for what purposes they are given. Designed from a student perspective, the tool can be used by education leaders to make Read more about Achieve Creates Tool to Help School Districts Track Their Use of Assessments[…]
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has released a list of 10 things you should know about the PARCC assessments as you start off this school year: PARCC is your state’s homegrown assessment. PARCC is not a testing company – it’s a group of states working together to build better Read more about Ten Things to Know About PARCC[…]
On his Education Week blog, Marc Tucker discusses the National Center for Education and the Economy’s latest report, which calls for replacing the current system of test-based accountability with a system much more likely to result in improvements in student performance. Following is an excerpt describing the plan outlined in the new report: Fixing Our Read more about Educator Accountability for Education Professionals – A New Idea[…]