Rules Urge New Style of Testing

Federal Competition Launched

Competition has opened for $350 million in federal money to design new ways of assessing what students learn. Rules for the contest make clear that the government wants to leave behind multiple-choice testing more often in favor of essays, multidisciplinary projects, and other more nuanced measures of achievement.

In the final regulations for the competition, issued this month, the U.S. Department of Education says that it seeks assessments that “more validly measure” students’ knowledge and skills than those that have come to dominate state testing in recent years. It wants tests that show not only what students have learned, but also how that achievement has grown over time and whether they are on track to do well in college. And all that, the regulations said, requires assessments that elicit “complex student demonstrations or applications” of what they’ve learned.

The money for the competition is a slice of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund , which is financed with money from the economic-stimulus...