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10-State Pilot Preparing Teachers to Develop Tests

Federal government underwrites project on formative assessments.

Call them “formative,” “internal,” or “enhanced,” but whatever label you hang on a new wave of federally financed assessments being piloted this fall in 10 states, experts say they are a sign of the growing recognition that standardized end-of-grade tests are not the end-all, be-all for measuring student learning.

“It’s a conceptual shift,” said Elliot Weinbaum, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Consortium for Policy Research in Education, or CPRE—part of the coalition of organizations and 10 states that won a $1.3 million, 18-month grant from the U.S. Department of Education to improve state academic assessments.

“No Child Left Behind helped us identify challenges and problems,” Mr. Weinbaum said, referring to the 5½-year-old federal law, which uses state-test results as the primary gauge of academic progress. The next step, he added, is to start asking, “Now, what are we supposed...