Giving Compass' Take:

•  Arthur VanderVeen, writing for Getting Smart, explores how the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) pilot is an opportunity for educators and policy leaders to create assessments that will better support student-centered learning. 

• How can donors play a role in helping innovate the education space?

• Here are five ideas for education innovation in 2019. 

Educators and policy leaders might be forgiven for not often turning to the Federal Register for inspiration. But buried there in the ESSA regulations is a truly inspired effort to resolve one of the most vexing tensions shaping our national discussion on the role of assessment: the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) pilot.

The IADA invites up to seven states to develop innovative, next-generation assessments that better support student-centered learning, including competency-based assessments, instructionally embedded assessments, interim assessments, or performance-based assessments that better inform instruction and measure the higher-order thinking skills so vital to success in the global economy of the 21st century.

States, districts and schools don’t need federal authorization to adopt student-centered assessment models. But the U.S. Education Department (USED) does have a say when states want to use one of these innovative assessments to meet ESSA’s requirements for an annual, summative measure of whether students have mastered grade-level achievement standards, and do so meeting peer review requirements for alignment, rigor, reliability, validity and comparability.

And herein lies that vexing tension: How do we balance a need for student-centered, instructionally valuable assessments with a need for reliable common measures of student outcomes that are crucial for advancing equity; informing parents, educators and community members of how well their schools are serving their students; and identifying those schools that need additional help? If student-centered assessments are personalized to the needs of individual students and their learning contexts, how can they provide a standard measure to hold schools accountable for lifting all students to the same high bar, albeit through different pathways?

Read the full article about investing in innovation by Arthur VanderVeen at Getting Smart.