Giving Compass' Take:

• Within the  ESSA guidelines, a major difference is the amount of decision-making power and that states can have over curriculum and teacher instruction, including a major shift toward interim assessments.

• How will new decisions about assessments and curriculum instruction benefit student learning?

• Read about how states are supporting data use under ESSA. 

One of the main shifts from NCLB to ESSA is an effort to provide states with more decision-making power regarding curriculum, instruction, and assessments.

“The overarching goal behind the changes was to get the federal government out of the states’ business, giving the states more flexibility,” explains Lisa Andrejko, education advisor for PeopleAdmin and a former school superintendent.

ESSA has presented states with the opportunity to adapt how they evaluate student progress throughout the year and in traditional end-of-year assessments. Here are a few of the big-picture ideas influencing many states as they approach assessment design and implementation.

  • Situational Flexibility:  Across the board, states are rethinking one-size-fits-all standardized assessments and instead considering individual student progress. But it’s also more difficult — and time-consuming — for states to create personalized, student-centered assessments. Like the SAT and ACT for college admissions, standardized K-12 grade-based assessments are easy to use to describe student achievement, yet they don’t give a complete picture of how a student is faring.
  • Multi-subject testing: Several states are starting to include subjects beyond the traditional math and reading in their K-12 assessments. All 50 states include science in their summative testing at least twice prior to high school, and some are starting to incorporate social studies, government or economics, as well.
  • Leveraging interim assessments: In pursuit of a student-centered approach, many states are prioritizing interim assessments over traditional end-of-year summative tests.
  • Testing to inform instruction: If the purpose of testing is to inform instruction, it makes sense for states to re-evaluate the end-of-year summative assessment.

Read the full article about NCLB to ESSA by Jessica Leigh Brown at EducationDive