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Investing in Assessments of Deeper Learning: The Costs and Benefits of Tests That Help Students Learn
Abstract
This chapter presents recent data and analysis that illustrate how higher-quality assessments can become affordable. The United States is poised to take a major step in the direction of curriculum and assessments for deeper learning with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards in more than forty states. Policymakers would like to know whether the benefits of performance assessment justify the burdens. The benefits may justify the burdens from the perspective of education. As illustrated in the chapter, the costs associated with performance assessments have declined over the past decade, making it more attractive to incorporate some degree of performance assessment into state testing programs. Some states in the U.S. and nearly all local districts are making considerable investments in interim and benchmark assessments, test preparation materials and programs, and interventions to improve scores.
... Researchers increasingly agree that test-based accountability policies under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) failed to support the meaningful learning opportunities necessary to prepare all students for success in college, career, and life (Heilig & Darling-Hammond, 2008;Jennings & Sohn, 2014;Meier & Wood, 2004;Plank & Condliffe, 2013). Although the law brought much needed attention to the performance of historically underserved students, NCLB's annual testing requirements led to an overreliance on "bubble" tests that emphasized low-level skills and narrowed the curriculum through a focus on mathematics and reading (Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2014). Recent changes in federal educational accountability policy, including the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as ESSA, have created new opportunities for states to use performance assessments as part of their efforts to develop systems of assessment that support deeper learning by more closely integrating assessment with curriculum and instruction. ...
... To address cost and quality concerns, states have combined resources through testing consortia (e.g., Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium [SBAC]) that support states in developing high-quality performance tasks that meet the federal government's rigorous technical requirements and reduce testing development and administration costs. Scholars argue that the cost of developing and scoring performance tasks is similar to the cost of more traditional item development when shared among states or districts (Chingos, 2012;Topol, Olson, Roeber, Darling-Hammond, & Adamson, 2014). Furthermore, the increased flexibility allowed by ESSA may help to reduce the technical constraints of NCLB, which limited the large-scale use of performance tasks for accountability. ...
... While it can be difficult to develop assessments that include performance items while meeting technical requirements set forth by the federal government, the efforts of PARCC and SBAC demonstrate that it can be done. The cost of scoring and developing performance tasks for use as summative assessment items is comparable to the cost of developing more traditional items when shared across a consortium of states or districts Topol et al., 2014). Furthermore, the effects of including even one performance task as part of a summative assessment can be significant and include beneficial instructional shifts that lead to more meaningful, contentrich learning opportunities for students, a greater understanding among teachers of the expectations of proficient student performance, and decreased "test prep" activities (Ferrara, 2009;Guthrie, Almasi, Schafer, & Afflerbach, 1994;Koretz, Stecher, Klein, McCaffrey, & Diebert, 1993). ...
This paper reviews state strategies for incorporating performance assessment in policy and practice. Specifically, the paper reviews the use of performance assessment in 12 states in the Innovation Lab Network, a group committed to developing systems of assessment that provide meaningful measures of college and career readiness. This review suggests that states relied on four central approaches for integrating performance assessment in state and local systems of assessment: 1) classroom purposes, 2) graduation requirement, 3) school accountability purposes, or 4) federal accountability. We review these approaches and the benefits and challenges associated with each strategy.
... In the 1990s, performance-based assessments became a valid alternative to traditional multiple-choice tests. In the years that followed, legislative requirements shifted the emphasis to standardized testing, which caused a decline in nontraditional testing methods [6]. Currently, more school districts and universities are seeking authentic measures of student learning, and performancebased assessments have become increasingly relevant. ...
The study presented in this paper sought to revisit and assess the nitty-gritty of the implementation of Theme-Based Authentic Performance Assessment (TBAPA) in the Division of Surigao del Sur. Identifying the different challenges of teachers in giving authentic assessment to students entails important basic questions which are great relevance in order to enhance its implementation in the succeeding school year of modular distance learning modality. Variables being considered are Profile of the respondents, Identification of competencies, Selection of activities, Degree of difficulty, Assessment Rubrics, Quality and Recording. A digital questionnaire was sent to the teachers of Surigao del Sur Division. After performing statistical calculations, a novel finding is that, the major challenge in the implementation of the TBAPA is the quality of outputs submitted by the learners. The survey revealed a mean of 3.94 for the quality variable. It is crucial to note that under this area of concern, statement number 1 "The outputs submitted are obviously student-made" got the lowest mean which is equal to 3.67. It is also interesting to note that recording of the performance assessment results is also deemed as a challenge in the TBAPA implementation since it got a mean score of 4.20. Statement number 4 under recording which says "The outputs are submitted on time" has the lowest mean score of 3.62. These findings of the study point towards the idea that the learners need to be oriented on time management to expedite the recording of assessment results by the teachers using the validated rubrics.
... In the educational experience presented, future teachers experienced the experiences in their practice centers feeling at all times accompanied and valued by their own classmates [9,12]. The objective was to achieve the activation of professional action competencies. ...
The development of professional practices during the university stage is a fundamental factor for quality skills development. For many students, it is the first real experience in a professional context, so continuous monitoring by teachers is necessary. This article presents an innovative proposal to develop the follow-up of the professional practices of the degree in Primary Education, and two Masters’ in Psychopedagogy and Special Educational Needs using a learning management system (LMS) (Blackboard). The experience was developed by a team of teachers from the departments of Didactics and Educational Organization and Research Methods and Educational Diagnosis of the University of Seville (Spain). The aspects to be studied are the development of communication, reflection, and collaborative learning processes during the internship period. After an explicit agreement, 24 students (10 from the course “Professional Practices I” in undergraduate students; and the others from the Master’s) committed to periodically using the blog designed ad hoc for this experience. A content analysis of the speeches posted on the blog was carried out, examining the changes, the advantages, and the disadvantages that this model entailed. It allowed observing similarities and differences between both groups of students. As the main conclusion, there were some differences between the two groups of students, regarding the number, type, and contents of interventions; there were no differences in the assessment of the methodology, all the students thought that it was a very positive assessment of the experience for generating information exchange networks among colleagues and teachers. Finally, the relevance of constant monitoring of the academic tutor was highlighted.
... In the educational experience presented, future teachers experienced the experiences in their practice centers feeling at all times accompanied and valued by their own classmates [9,12]. The objective was to achieve the activation of professional action competencies. ...
The development of professional practices during the university stage is a fundamental factor for quality skills development. For many students, it is the first real experience in a professional context, so continuous monitoring by teachers is necessary. This article presents an innovative proposal to develop the follow-up of the professional practices of the degree in Primary Education, and two Masters’ in Psychopedagogy and Special Educational Needs using a learning management system (LMS) (Blackboard). The experience was developed by a team of teachers from the departments of Didactics and Educational Organization and Research Methods and Educational Diagnosis of the University of Seville (Spain). The aspects to be studied are the development of communication, reflection, and collaborative learning processes during the internship period. After an explicit agreement, 24 students (10 from the course “Professional Practices I” in undergraduate students; and the others from the Master’s) committed to periodically using the blog designed ad hoc for this experience. A content analysis of the speeches posted on the blog was carried out, examining the changes, the advantages, and the disadvantages that this model entailed. It allowed observing similarities and differences between both groups of students. As the main conclusion, there were some differences between the two groups of students, regarding the number, type, and contents of interventions; there were no differences in the assessment of the methodology, all the students thought that it was a very positive assessment of the experience for generating information exchange networks among colleagues and teachers. Finally, the relevance of constant monitoring of the academic tutor was highlighted.
... The future teachers who participated in this study experienced the real classroom life at all times accompanied and valued by their own peers (Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2013). Our objective was to achieve the activation of professional action competences. ...
Ballesteros-Regana, C., Siles-Rojas, C., Hervas-Gomez, C., & Diaz-Noguera, M.D. (2019). Improving the Quality of Teaching Internships with the Help of the Platforms. European Journal of Educational Research, 8(4), 1101-1114. doi:10.12973/eu-jer.8.4.1101
https://www.eu-jer.com/EU-JER_8_4_1101.pdf
This article presents an empirical study on the perceptions of university students toward the development of the teaching practicum, using the CourseSites platform as a communication and support tool for their training. The opinions of the students were collected through a questionnaire. The sample consisted of 1500 students who were registered in the degrees of Early Childhood Education, Primary Education and Pedagogy (2008-2018). A descriptive, inferential and multi-level analysis was conducted, which confirmed that future teachers had activated their professional competences, as they had the chance to share their internship experiences with their faculty members and with their own classmates.
https://www.eu-jer.com/improving-the-quality-of-teaching-internships-with-the-help-of-the-platforms
... Higher order thinking skills (HOTs) are important competencies to be had in life, both in the work environment and in society especially in the 21st century (Darling-Hammond, L., Adamson, F, 2013). The competencies needed for the 21st century consist of the skill to: think critical, creative, communicative and collaborative. ...
... Sin embargo, a pesar de la existencia de un espectro de propues- tas pedagógicas alternativas, "la base fundamental del sistema está fatalmente defectuosa", afirma Linda Darling-Hammond, profesora de educación en Stanford y directora fundadora de la Comisión Nacional Sobre la Enseñanza y el Futuro de América. Las necesidades de conocimientos prácticos han cambiado, pero no ha cambiado la orientación de los procesos educativos " (Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2013): ...
La intención de este texto no es plantear un marco general de transformación de los sistemas universitarios, ni establecer una hoja de ruta concreta. Partiendo de una breve descripción de los síntomas de la crisis de los modelos tradicionales, nuestra pretensión es esbozar los retos que un modelo universitario debe enfrentar en el siglo XXI y dibujar el panorama de lo que ya está sucediendo en torno a ellos. El cómo transformar la educación se ha convertido en las últimas décadas en eje central de un intenso debate. Las experiencias de innovación educativa han proliferado en todos los rincones del planeta, pero lamentablemente en el ámbito universitario siguen siendo prácticas minoritarias. Parece evidente que las estrategias que busquen realmente superar los límites de los modelos tradicionales deben buscar objetivos alternativos, que no dependan de grandes inversiones y que promuevan un aprendizaje real y efectivo. Es ahí es donde surgen oportunidades de modelos realmente innovadores. Finalmente, presentamos algunas ideas que tratan de articular un posicionamiento estratégico en el contexto ecuatoriano, realizando un ejercicio de aterrizaje, que si bien debemos insistir en su carácter preliminar, consideramos que puede contribuir a arrojar un poco de luz sobre el camino a recorrer.
... Their strategic importance was highlighted by President Obama in March 2009: ''I am calling on our nation's Governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship, and creativity'' [1]. However, the kinds of assessments that the President wished for often require careful human scoring that is far more expensive to administer than multiple-choice tests [2]. Computer-based assessments, which rely on the learning software to automatically collect and sift learner data through unobtrusive logging [3], are viewed as a promising solution as digital learning becomes increasingly prevalent. ...
Computer-aided design (CAD) logs provide fine-grained empirical data of student activities for assessing learning in engineering design projects. However, the instructional sensitivity of CAD logs, which describes how students respond to interventions with CAD actions, has rarely been examined. For the logs to be used as reliable data sources for assessments, they must be instructionally sensitive. This paper reports the results of our systematic research on this important topic. To guide the research, we first propose a theoretical framework for computer-based assessments based on signal processing. This framework views assessments as detecting signals from the noisy background often present in large temporal learner datasets due to many uncontrollable factors and events in learning processes. To measure instructional sensitivity, we analyzed nearly 900 megabytes of process data logged by our Energy3D CAD software as collections of time series. These time-varying data were gathered from 65 high school students who solved a solar urban design challenge using Energy3D in seven class periods, with an intervention occurring in the middle of their design projects. Our analyses of these data show that the occurrence of the design actions unrelated to the intervention were not affected by it, whereas the occurrence of the design actions that the intervention targeted reveals a continuum of reactions ranging from no response to strong response. From the temporal patterns of these student responses, persistent effects and temporary effects (with different decay rates) were identified. Students' electronic notes taken during the design processes were used to validate their learning trajectories. These results show that an intervention occurring outside a CAD tool can leave a detectable trace in the CAD logs, suggesting that the logs can be used to quantitatively determine how effective an intervention has been for each individual student during an engineering design project.
Políticas públicas agrarias como apoyo al sector cacaotero y su incidencia en los pequeños productores de Ecuador, es parte de un conjunto de reportes publicados en Revista Sector e IV
The purpose of this study was to pursue an enhanced understanding of teacher assessment literacy by investigating tertiary EFL practitioners’ assessment-related personal theories, conceptions and beliefs. The study was based on sociocultural theory as a theoretical framework and informed by interpretivism philosophical underpinnings. Twelve teachers from three tertiary educational institutions in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia participated in semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed employing a thematic analysis approach. The findings revealed diversity, complexity and uncertainty in teacher beliefs and personal theories related to various aspects of assessment and testing. The findings also provided deeper insights into the role of contextual and institutional dynamics that influence teachers’ assessment-related decision-making process. These findings have implications for teacher education and professional development programmes in terms of assessment policy, procedures and practice.
This paper attempts to develop a social understanding of the ‘urban’ and urban schooling in the city of Kolkata (Kolkata is the capital city of the Indian State of West Bengal). With a brief foray into the socio-economic history of the city and its education system, it examines the role of upper middle classes in fashioning the dominant discourse and practice of schooling in the city in recent times. The overriding ethos of education that permeates the city environment is then analyzed more closely in terms of the urban penchant for privatized school choice, the growing trend to view education as a business under the shadow of capitalist urbanism, and the rising obsession with test-intensive education. All these have the effect, the paper argues, of generating homogeneous educational thinking, without however equalizing educational opportunities for children across all social classes. Consequently, spatial and school segregation are both evident in the city. If the ‘outside’- i.e. social and structural forces- shapes the ‘inside’, that is to say, the functioning of schools, the paper explores to what extent the converse also holds. To put it differently, to what extent can schools and schoolteachers make a difference to schooling experiences of children especially children from disadvantaged backgrounds? The paper suggests that the equity-enhancing potential of schoolteachers is neither inevitable nor impossible. The promises that such potential unleashes will hopefully lead us to revisit the purpose of education and rethink how to kindle both curiosity and ‘imaginative sympathy’ among children. The twenty-first century city cannot but address this first-order question.
In 2004, leading testing expert Robert L. Brennan1 explained: “I failed to recognize that a testing revolution was underway in this country that was based on the nearly unchallenged belief (with almost no supporting evidence) that high-stakes testing can and will lead to improved education.”2 Despite such cautions from mainstream assessment and measurement scholars, the current frequency and use of standardized testing is unprecedented in US history. In Canada, despite significant variation across its provinces and territories, norm-referenced standardized testing (ST) has scarcely been as widely used as it is today. To be clear, testing is not the only important development underway in education. Despite a push against social foundations in education3 in some teacher preparation programs, teacher training is generally more comprehensive than it used to be. New teachers are better versed in supporting diverse students, they have access to a greater variety of instruction and assessment techniques and they have a deeper applied understanding of education research and technology than many of their predecessors. However, while testing is not the only driver of change, it is the most significant. Standardized testing is best understood as a technology, the nature and effects of which can be read a number of ways.
In July 2010, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted to adopt Common Core’s standards in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics in place of the state’s own standards in these two subjects. The vote was based largely on recommendations by Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester and then Secretary of Education Paul Reville, and on the conclusions in three studies comparing the state’s standards with Common Core’s, all financed directly or indirectly by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all issued by organizations that are among the primary boosters of Common Core (Achieve, Inc., Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education).
Nevertheless, annual state testing for school and district accountability continued as part of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) mandated by the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA). To accommodate the adoption of Common Core’s standards, tests were based on both the old standards and an annually increasing number of Common Core’s standards until 2015, when all of the pre-Common Core standards in ELA and mathematics were archived, and the MCAS tests were presumably only Common Core-based.
After the vote to adopt Common Core’s standards in 2010, the state joined the testing consortium called Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), funded by the United States Department of Education (USED) to develop common tests for its member states (about 25 initially), but with the costs for administering the tests to be borne by the states and local school districts. Since 2011, PARCC has been developing tests that BESE is expected to vote to adopt in the late fall of 2015 as the state’s official Common Core-based tests in place of Common Core-based MCAS tests. (Indeed, the commissioner of education and his staff at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) have been implementing a transition to PARCC tests for several years.) BESE’s official vote will be guided, again, by the recommendations of the same commissioner of education (who now also chairs PARCC’s Governing Board), the current Secretary of Education James Peyser, and the conclusions reached in “external” studies comparing PARCC and MCAS tests as well as in about 20 studies directly authorized by PARCC.
Two of the external studies are listed in the state’s 2015 application to the USED for a waiver from No Child Left Behind Act requirements and are by organizations that had originally recommended adoption of Common Core. One, issued by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education in February 2015, claims that PARCC tests predict college readiness better than MCAS tests did. A second, to be completed by the Fordham Institute and a partner, is to be issued in time for BESE’s vote. A third, issued in mid-October 2015 by Mathematica Policy Research (and requested by the state’s Executive Office of Education) claims both tests are equally predictive of college readiness, although its report has major shortcomings.
This White Paper will be a fourth external report on the question BESE’s vote will address; it is motivated by our interest in providing an analysis of how MCAS and PARCC assess reading and writing. Much less national attention has been paid to Common Core-based assessments of reading and writing than of mathematics, yet reading and writing skills are just as important to readiness for college and career as is mathematics.
At the order of Governor Charles Baker, BESE held five public hearings across the state in 2015 to enable the public to testify on whether it wants BESE to adopt the Common Core-based PARCC tests as the state’s official tests. The purpose for the hearings remains unclear; over two years ago, the commissioner of education told local superintendents that the state would be transitioning to PARCC anyway.
If BESE officially votes to adopt PARCC as the state’s testing system, it will automatically abandon the use of Common Core-based MCAS tests for K-12. (It is not clear if non-Common Core-based MCAS tests, such as those in science and history, would be prohibited as well.) It would also tie the state to joint decisions by the member states in the PARCC consortium (fewer than 10 at this writing) and to policies established by USED for new Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) grants to the states.
Congress rewrote ESEA in the summer of 2015, putting control of a state’s standards and tests, which are required for receipt of ESEA funds, in the hands of state commissioners, boards, and staffs of education, with no approval required by state legislatures, higher education teaching faculty in the arts and sciences, local school boards, or parents. (A reconciliation bill remains to be approved by Congress and signed by the president.) Approval of a state’s standards and tests is to be granted by USED based on the recommendations of those whom it chooses to review applications. In other words, federal control will remain intact, simply more indirect and hidden.
In a comparison of Common Core-based PARCC tests and pre-Common Core MCAS tests, this study identifies six major flaws in PARCC tests:
1. Most PARCC writing prompts do not elicit the kind of writing done in college or the real world of work.
2. PARCC uses a format for assessing word knowledge that is almost completely unsupported by research and seriously misleads teachers.
3. PARCC’s computerized testing system has not shown more effectiveness than a paper-and-pencil-based testing system or a return of useful information to the teachers of the students who took PARCC tests.
4. PARCC uses “innovative” item-types for which no evidence exists to support claims that they tap deeper thinking and reasoning in understanding a text.
5. PARCC tests require too many instructional hours to administer and prepare for. They also do not give enough information back to teachers or schools to justify the extra hours and costs
6. PARCC test-items do not use student-friendly language and its ELA reading selections do not look as if they were selected by secondary English teachers.
Central Recommendation
This White Paper’s central recommendation is that Massachusetts use a testing system for K-12 that is much less costly, more rigorous academically, and much more informative about individual student performance, and with much less instructional time spent on test preparation and administration, than the current PARCC tests. Both the PARCC tests and the current MCAS tests in grade 10 are weak, albeit for different reasons, and neither indicates eligibility for a high school diploma, college readiness, or career readiness. In essence, the authors recommend that BESE reject the PARCC assessment system and vote for the MCAS system but on the condition that the responsibility for developing and administering K-12 standards and tests be assigned to an organization in Massachusetts independent of DESE and the state’s education schools. This organization must focus squarely on providing the best possible content standards from disciplinary experts in the arts, sciences, and engineering throughout the state and be capable of providing oversight of high school standards and tests. If carried out, these recommendations would ensure the legacy and future promise of MERA.
The members of the Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium—a group of large, highly diverse, and successful districts across the country—have made great strides in achieving college and career readiness for all students. While they are succeeding, the consortium proposes that more could be done to accomplish their objectives through collaboration with Congress to establish federal policy and laws aligned with practices that foster college and career ready outcomes at scale. This article, introduced by Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent S. Dallas Dance, proposes the critical principles that should undergird a new federal approach to state and district accountability.
Rubrics are assessment tools that help students gain complex competencies. Our pilot-study aimed to evaluate an assessment instrument supporting teachers to teach and assess in alignment with national standards. Students in four 5th grade primary classes (n = 67) in two Swiss cantons worked on their mathematical reasoning competencies using our standards-based rubric. An achievement test was administered at the end of the study. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrated that the stages of the rubric were valid and the instrument was reliable. The tools’ expected learning support features were confirmed: Working with the rubric fostered the teachers’ and the students’ understanding of the standard, enabled the students to self- and peer-assess and allowed teachers to provide effective feedback.
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