Assessments of Deeper Learning Earn High Marks from Parents

Amid the often-heated debates over assessment, one group is rarely heard from: parents. So the report issued February 8 by the Northwest Evaluation Association is welcome. The Oregon-based assessment and research organization conducted a survey of 1,009 parents, along with surveys of 1,024 teachers and 200 district administrators, to find out what they wanted from testing.

Not surprisingly, parents are most interested in information about their own children’s progress. They overwhelmingly want to monitor their children’s performance, to know when to be concerned about it, and to determine their preparedness for the next stage of learning. Teachers also thought monitoring individual student performance was most important, while administrators ranked monitoring growth in learning over time and monitoring teacher effectiveness highly.

Morning Announcements: April 20, 2011

The Palm Beach County school district says it'll need more time, money to switch to digital textbooks, the Palm Beach Post News reports.

Catherine Gewertz of Education Week covers a U.S. Department of Education hearing convened last week to inform the two assessment consortia, SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium and Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, as they design tests for the new common standards in mathematics and English/language arts that have been adopted by all but six states, using $360 million in federal Race to the Top money.

The Free Times (Columbia, SC) and the Journal Times (Racine, WI) cover the Alliance’s report on the economic benefits of improving high school graduation rates.

Race to the Top of the Tests

While the $3.5 billion Race to the Top program has captured the attention of much of the education world, a smaller grant program might have an equal if not greater impact on schools across the United States. On September 2, the U.S. Education Department awarded a total of $330 million to two consortia of states to develop new assessment systems. If these consortia fulfill their ambitious plans, states will soon transform the way they test students in dramatic ways.

And most of the country will be affected. The larger of the two consortia, the Smarter, Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), led by Washington State, consists of 31 states; the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), led by Florida, consists of 26 states. (The total adds up to more than 50 because states at this point can serve as “advisory” states without committing to a consortium. Several states, including Alaska, Texas, and Virginia, are part of neither.)

In Principles for a Common Assessment System, a brief released in February, the Alliance for Excellent Education argued that current state testing systems place too much emphasis on a single measure, the end-of-year tests, and called for comprehensive systems that can better support instruction and learning. The two consortia’s plans are aligned with many of the principles outlined in that brief.