Experts Lay Out Vision for Future Assessments
More-analytical tasks would replace factual recall of multiple-choice.
A group of high-powered policymakers and educators gathered here last week to build support for a new vision of educational assessment that is less a snapshot of students’ one-time performance and more like good instruction itself.
Led by Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a panel of experts outlined a comprehensive system that includes summative and formative tests of higher-order thinking skills, reflecting a marketplace that they say places increasing value on such skills.
They urged a move away from pages and pages of multiple-choice tests that demand factual recall, and toward the development of a set of deeper, more analytical questions, tasks, and projects that ask students to solve and discuss complex problems. One example is a problem that has been posed to Connecticut high school students: Figure out how to build a statue that could withstand the effects of acid rain, then describe, analyze,...
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