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Tough Work Begins for Race to Top Assessment Winners

Most States Part of Groups Winning Federal Grants

By Catherine Gewertz and Erik W. Robelen

In a move that could reshape academic assessment in nearly every corner of the country, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded $330 million in grants to collaboratives of states to design better ways of measuring student learning.

The grants , awarded Sept. 2, went to two groups of states that sought the money under the federal Race to the Top program, spawned last year by the federal economic-stimulus law. Through the two consortia, 44 states and the District of Columbia are taking part in shaping the new assessments, which are scheduled to debut in the 2014-15 school year.

Dividing the money almost equally, the consortia must build testing systems that gauge how well students master a newly crafted set of common academic standards in mathematics and English/language arts that have been adopted so far—at least provisionally—by 36 states and the District of Columbia. Those testing systems also must be capable of producing rapid feedback for teachers on students’ learning and of measuring the effectiveness of teachers,...