A Reassessment of How We’re Measuring Students

Executive Perspective

The assessment of a student’s performance always has been a critical component of teaching. How else would the teacher know that a student actually has learned the lesson taught?

Teacher-developed quizzes are the basis for the grades given to students. Those assessments help the teacher determine the instructional strategies that will best meet the needs of the students.

That process is the staple of classroom assessments, but it does not generalize beyond that teacher and that class. Even within that class, seldom does a teacher-developed quiz meet the psychometric standards of reliability and validity. Teacher grading varies from teacher to teacher and class to class. The quiz itself is a random assessment of the content taught and the results may not reflect mastery of the total content.

Testing Escalates

Test development is a science, and testing companies invest a considerable amount of time and resources to develop valid and reliable tests that schools can use to not only assess student performance, but also to compare that performance within a grade level, a school, a school district, a nation.

There was a time when standardized tests were used by school districts to gain their own assessment of their students’ performance. The passage of No Child Left Behind changed that as school districts were required to administer tests for the purpose of accountability. Standards were established so districts and schools had to meet those standards to avoid public labels for not making adequate yearly progress. Soon thereafter, the standardized test results became the basis for teacher evaluation, generating a negative backlash from teachers.

As schools and districts were evaluated based on their performance on the standardized tests, primarily on math and reading scores, many schools began to prioritize the teaching of those subjects at the expense of a richer and broader curriculum. The increase in testing and the diminution of other subjects began to concern parents who began to boycott the administration of the federally required standardized tests.

The blowback against testing was partially responsible for the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act that reduced the emphasis on testing, but not entirely. Test results had been indicative of a widening achievement gap between various categories of students. White and Asian students performed significantly better than Black and Hispanic students. There also was a significant gap based on family income.

Civil rights groups have pointed to the test results as proof positive of the racial and economic disparity that exists in our schools. The lack of closure of the achievement gap is evidence that the affected students require more resources. The test results are needed to continue to evaluate the increase or decrease in the gap.

A Waiver Option

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the waiving of the required tests last year. Many school districts were forced to abandon in-person learning and switch to remote learning. The required testing would not be possible. This year the U.S. Department of Education has not waived the administration of the tests, but it is inviting states to request a waiver from the accountability provisions.
 
Many educators appreciate the opportunity to waive the latter in a chaotic year when many students have not received sustained in-person instruction, but also are concerned that the continuing requirement to administer a test may be problematic if a significant number of students are not attending school in person and that the time devoted to test administration diminishes much-needed time on instruction.

Civil rights groups, among others, believe that this year in particular, students ought to be assessed for learning loss, and they see this as the basis for requisite testing. Educators counter that the typical standardized tests would not assess the needs of each student, as would be the case with diagnostic assessments.

The debate is indicative of the need for a long-term solution that would combine assessment for accountability purposes with assessment to inform instruction. Advances in technology offer ways of embedding assessment into instructional activities offered online, thus reducing testing time. Formative assessment practices are currently available and combined with artificial intelligence programs may well be the solution we seek.

Focusing accountability primarily on reading and mathematical skills excludes the assessment of other areas that may be deemed as important, such as the recent focus on social and emotional skills and the soft skill areas that the world of work now demands.