Opinion Blog


Rick Hess Straight Up

Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Read more from this blog.

Assessment Opinion

Five Intuitions to Guide Assessment in 2021 and After

By Rick Hess — February 08, 2021 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

We’re now entering the 12th month of the pandemic, making it nearly a year since COVID-19 first shut down schools across the land. Amid all the ensuing disruption, the question of testing has continued to raise its vexing head. Last spring, Uncle Sam waived the annual testing required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. This year, the gold-standard National Assessment of Educational Progress has already been pushed back to 2022 due to COVID-19.

Now, as we near the annual testing season, there’s a rising debate about whether spring 2021 testing would provide an essential window into how schools are faring or an unnecessary distraction sure to yield unreliable data. Over at Education Next, there’s a terrific forum on this question, with Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, and Lorrie Shepard, distinguished professor of education at CU Boulder, arguing against “testing as usual,” while Jessica Baghian, former assistant state education chief for Louisiana, urges “staying the course” on statewide assessment. (Full disclosure: I’m an executive editor at Ed Next.) It’s well worth the read.

Meanwhile, beyond the question of whether to test, there’s also the equally crucial question of how we should approach testing. On that score, Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli and I have sketched five guiding principles to keep in mind as we approach assessment in 2021 and beyond. They are:

First, testing has to be about helping teachers teach and learners learn. The emphasis during the No Child Left Behind era was on tests that would allow policymakers to judge school performance. Our state tests, which owe so much to NCLB’s commitment to accountability and transparency, have real value. But they frequently provide results long after school ends and, in any event, don’t give teachers or parents information intended to aid individual learners. As we look to getting tens of millions of kids back to school and diagnosing where they are and what they need, there has to be a premium on assessments that are timely, agile, and useful for teaching and learning.

Second, don’t give up on reading, writing, and math tests. We might not need to test every kid every year, and the ‘3 Rs’ are surely not all that matter when it comes to education. But regular assessments of these basic skills provide important checks on what’s happening in schools, give us a sense of which schools or systems are doing especially well or poorly, and help us identify instructional practices that work. And let there be no doubt: Mastering literacy and numeracy is essential for every young American in the 21st century.

Third, we need good measures of school quality and student success that extend beyond reading, writing, and math scores. It’s been five years since the federal Every Student Succeeds Act opened the door for states to use new metrics to evaluate schools, yet the response has been anemic. Beyond some efforts to use absenteeism, student and parent surveys, and college-readiness indices, little has emerged. We’ve seen little movement on gauging civics education, world-language mastery, or other academic dimensions. Philanthropists, researchers, and public officials have much work to do when it comes to pioneering a richer, more robust array of metrics.

Fourth, accountability alone doesn’t make schools better. Don’t get us wrong—we’re not arguing against the value of assessing student learning and using those results to monitor school outcomes. But accountability systems which place too much weight on reading and math scores have proven to be a perilous path to system change—doing more to promote bureaucracy and stymie educators than serve students. We need to empower educators to do their best work and invest in developing the know-how that supports powerful learning. Sensible accountability is a part of that, but only a part.

Finally, parental choice is a vital form of accountability, too. Most efforts to intervene in chronically low-performing schools don’t work, and few states have the political will to shutter ineffective schools, even if that would be best for their students. A smarter approach is to let parents vote with their feet and make sure that kids stuck in bad schools get better options. That’s both the right thing to do and a more plausible way to put bad schools out of their misery.

As many have noted, the dislocations of COVID-19 have created an opportunity to rethink familiar assumptions and habits. Testing and accountability should be no exception.

Related Tags:

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up 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

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
Teaching Students to Use Artificial Intelligence Ethically
Ready to embrace AI in your classroom? Join our master class to learn how to use AI as a tool for learning, not a replacement.
Content provided by Solution Tree
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Teaching Webinar
Empowering Students Using Computational Thinking Skills
Empower your students with computational thinking. Learn how to integrate these skills into your teaching and boost student engagement.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
IT Infrastructure & Management Webinar
The Reality of Change: How Embracing and Planning for Change Can Shape Your Edtech Strategy
Promethean edtech experts delve into the reality of tech change and explore how embracing and planning for it can be your most powerful strategy for maximizing ROI.
Content provided by Promethean

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 Massachusetts Voters Poised to Ditch High School Exit Exam
The support for nixing the testing requirement could foreshadow public opinion on state standardized testing in general.
3 min read
Tight cropped photograph of a bubble sheet test with  a pencil.
E+
Assessment This School Didn't Like Traditional Grades. So It Created Its Own System
Principals at this middle school said the transition to the new system took patience and time.
6 min read
Close-up of a teacher's hands grading papers in the classroom.
E+/Getty
Assessment Opinion 'Academic Rigor Is in Decline.' A College Professor Reflects on AP Scores
The College Board’s new tack on AP scoring means fewer students are prepared for college.
4 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week
Assessment Opinion Students Shouldn't Have to Pass a State Test to Graduate High School
There are better ways than high-stakes tests to think about whether students are prepared for their next step, writes a former high school teacher.
Alex Green
4 min read
Reaching hands from The Creation of Adam of Michelangelo illustration representing the creation or origins of of high stakes testing.
Frances Coch/iStock + Education Week