Giving Compass' Take:

• Tom Vander Ark shares steps for states to end or shift away from standardized testing to improve students learning without sacrificing measuring progress. 

• How can funders help states better evaluate their students? 

• Learn more about standardized testing in America.

For 25 years, states have imposed standardized tests on schools as an external check on student progress. The tests provide an inexpensive comparable source of information that helps identify schools that are struggling and groups of students being poorly served. But let’s face it, everyone hates these tests.

While most OECD countries have sweated validity (good measures of what’s important), the US has been preoccupied with reliability (inexpensive measures of what’s measurable). The development of Common Core State Standards was a national effort to raise expectations and implement better tests. The addition of more writing made the tests longer and just added to the backlash against testing.

One problem with state-mandated tests is that they don’t take advantage of everything teachers know about their students.

To curtail or end standardized testing, states could verify that good systems have more than adequate student performance data. That would involve a three-step process:

  1. Districts and networks would petition for an assessment exemption by submitting a cohort of learner profiles. (To promote security, these profiles could be anonymized.)
  2. A comparability analysis would determine if the system can reliably and accurately report student progress (both achievement levels and growth rates). If yes, the system would be granted a three-year testing exemption.
  3. After an initial exemption period, states could sample student profiles to periodically check the accuracy of local systems.

This approach would work adequately for reading, writing and math (to be fully enacted, it would require an update of the federal policy but that seems doable). Given the interest in broader aims, networks of schools that share outcome frameworks hold real promise.

Read the full article about ending standardized testing by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.