Opinion Blog

Classroom Q&A

With Larry Ferlazzo

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. Read more from this blog.

Assessment Opinion

Alternatives to Standardized Tests During a Pandemic Year

By Larry Ferlazzo — March 24, 2021 7 min read
Images shows colorful speech bubbles that say "Q," "&," and "A."
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The new special question-of-the-week is:

What are alternatives to giving standardized tests in the middle of a pandemic?

The Biden administration’s unwise decision to require standardized testing this year is resulting in even more pressure on teachers and students—like any of us need more!

Today’s guests share some ideas for alternative assessments that could be more useful, accurate, and supportive for all who are spending their days in the physical or virtual classroom.

You might also be interested in previous columns appearing here on Assessment, as well as The Best Articles Describing Alternatives To High-Stakes Testing.

‘Flawed Data’

David DeMatthews is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mary Grace McFarland is a master’s student studying education policy at UT-Austin.

Lebon Daniel James III is a Ph.D. candidate in the educational policy and planning program in the College of Education at UT-Austin.

The Biden administration recently decided that all states must conduct standardized tests this year despite significant concerns raised by researchers, policymakers, educators, and families. The decision will provide flawed data, but schools should still take alternative actions to better support their students.

We implore principals and teachers to work together as they seek alternatives. The first step they can take is to reflect on their own experiences with standardized testing.

Most principals and teachers know that state standardized tests do not provide actionable data to adapt and individualize instruction in real time. The disruption caused by the pandemic will make state tests even less useful because many students will opt out, and it will be unclear what test scores are actually measuring given the diversity of student experiences.

State tests provide limited amounts of actionable data partly because they are given annually in paper or online form utilizing mostly multiple-choice questions designed for large populations. Principals and teachers do not receive results for lengthy periods of time, which means any data that might be actionable is likely outdated.

mostprincipals

Teacher-developed formative assessments typically provide the most meaningful and actionable data, especially when the design process is aligned to standards and considers the appropriate number of sample items necessary to draw accurate conclusions. Teachers can work collaboratively across a grade-level team or subject area to develop high-quality common formative assessments to gain insights into student-learning progression at the classroom and campus levels.

Principals and teachers should also consider utilizing adaptive tests like NWEA’s Measures of Academic Progress, which are computerized and adapt future questions based on student responses in real time. Adaptive tests allow teachers to immediately gain an understanding of student misconceptions and track student progress over time rather than relying on a singular data point after several months have passed.

State tests are also outdated because they fragment important knowledge into core-subject areas that are often irrelevant in the real world. As principals and teachers search for assessment alternatives as schools reopen, they should ask what they want their classrooms to look like and what outcomes would they like to assess and monitor over time.

Assessing a student’s ability to read, write, and calculate remains important. However, most educators we talk to also care deeply about critical thinking, scientific literacy, social and emotional well-being, and civic engagement. Principals and teachers should invest their time and resources in developing instruction and assessing progress specific to these critical areas.

A competency-based approach to instruction and assessment will be useful as schools reopen, especially considering that student motivation has been a challenge among parents and educators during the pandemic. Schools that successfully adopt competency-based approaches empower students to make decisions about their learning, which will improve student motivation.

A competency-based approach can utilize varied pacing so students can follow their own individualized learning pathway while assessments are designed to provide student feedback that is “useful, growth-oriented, and actionable.” This approach is particularly timely given that it provides continuous and individualized support to students.

Performance-based assessments might also be an alternative to standardized testing because they enable teachers to assess complex tasks across multiple disciplines. For example, Stanford University researchers have developed and promoted performance assessments in science that emphasize the importance of students revisiting and deepening their understanding of core concepts across grade levels while also making connections across multiple disciplines. These assessments can provide teachers greater insight into students’ content knowledge and critical-thinking skills while offering students a more meaningful and authentic opportunity to display what they have learned and how they might improve in the future.

Finally, principals and teachers could engage in “individualized student audits” to identify trends in student progress and target resources to address inequities and areas of need. Harvard professor Andrew Ho described a process of comparing student performance over multiple years and utilizing comparison groups of “academic peers” to identify students who may continue to struggle.

We suggest a more expansive audit that would also look specifically at students with disabilities and English-language learners to ensure that the appropriate services, eligibility testing, and progress-monitoring activity took place before and during the pandemic. For planning purposes, principals and teachers will need to discuss individual and student-group progress to allocate time and resources given any disruption to their learning trajectories.

The alternatives to standardized testing presented here are not comprehensive but rather a set of first steps for utilizing more varied, authentic, and student-centered approaches to instruction and assessment. While the pandemic has significantly disrupted schools, we are excited about schools reopening when it is safe and engaging in creative, interdisciplinary, and student-centered efforts to improving instruction and assessment.

teacherdeveloped

Thanks to David, Mary, and Lebon for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones won’t be available until February). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Assessment The 5 Burning Questions for Districts on Grading Reforms
As districts rethink grading policies, they consider the purpose of grades and how to make them more reliable measures of learning.
5 min read
Grading reform lead art
Illustration by Laura Baker/Education Week with E+ and iStock/Getty
Assessment As They Revamp Grading, Districts Try to Improve Consistency, Prevent Inflation
Districts have embraced bold changes to make grading systems more consistent, but some say they've inflated grades and sent mixed signals.
10 min read
Close crop of a teacher's hands grading a stack of papers with a red marker.
E+
Assessment Opinion What's the Best Way to Grade Students? Teachers Weigh In
There are many ways to make grading a better, more productive experience for students. Here are a few.
14 min read
Images shows colorful speech bubbles that say "Q," "&," and "A."
iStock/Getty
Assessment Spotlight Spotlight on Assessment
This Spotlight will help you evaluate effective ways to offer students feedback, learn how to improve assessments for ELs, and more.