Assessment News from Around the Country

Made famous by the Save Our Schools march and protests from famous individuals such as Matt Damon, an assessment-related topic that has made headlines for months is students' test scores effecting teacher evaluation. The Obama Administration created Race to the Top, a competition that challenged school and assessment reform and awarded funding to those who created the best ideas. As a result, many states adopted new large-scale assessment programs and revamped their teacher evaluation programs. These teacher evaluation systems incorporated a focus on students' test scores as grounds for assessment, spurring a wave of protest from teachers and policy makers. Opposers protest that using student test scores as an evaluation method have no scientific backing to support use of such tactics. They also argue that test-based evaluations had led to a multitude of negative consequences, including narrowing curriculum, a rise in cheating, and a drop in teacher engagement. Many argue that No Child Left Behind and other test-based evaluation systems forced a teaching to the test approach or else schools fall behind in funding and are labeled inadequate. The Obama Administration remains confident that student test scores are an important factor to consider when evaluating teachers but should not be the only important factor, such as principal evaluation, peer-teacher observations, tests of pedagogical knowledge, review of teaching portfolios, and even parent or student ratings. These, coupled with student test scores, should create a thorough teacher evaluation and assessment program that more closely resembles the effectiveness of teachers.

As previously mentioned in this blog, the SMARTER balanced assessment was a product of the Race to the Top initiative created by the Obama Administration and the US Department of Education. It aligns itself with the Common Core Standards of Education, a multi-state collection of standards that focuses on preparing American students for college and careers (corestandards.org). A total of 29 states (including Connecticut) have adopted this system of assessment because they believe the question types, various items, and the way the test is taken will more closely reflect what is happening in schools. Since 29 states have signed on to administer this test, states will become directly comparable and adjustments can be made to reflect the needs of those students.

Another multi-state form of assessment created as a result of the Race to the Top initiative is the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). Like the SMARTER balanced system, PARCC aligns itself with the Common Core Standards, as can be distinguished by the "Readiness for College and Career" portion of it's name. Currently 24 states have signed on to adopt this system of assessment. The vision of the PARCC system is that it provides deep and meaningful assessments that accurately prepare and assessment students' readiness for college and careers (parcconline.org). Interim assessments allow teachers to directly tie their teaching in the classroom to the goals of the PARCC assessment program throughout the school year. Technology is also an important component of this system as well and allow students to complete the assessments via computer.

Each of the two newly developed assessment programs aims to create a more reliable and demonstrative indicator of student success, which will in turn become more reliable when rating teacher effectiveness in relation to student test scores. These topics are and will continue to remain in the news across the country, especially with a presidential election coming up that has the power to once again adjust how we conduct assessments and teacher evaluations.