Testing in Missouri: Showing how it’s done or worrisome show?

02 Oct Testing in Missouri: Showing how it’s done or worrisome show?

By Dale Chu

In August, the Missouri State Board of Education unanimously approved a waiver request from nineteen districts and one charter school that allows them to pilot a through-year assessment model and to be exempted from certain provisions in the state’s accountability system for three years. The ability to apply for “innovation waivers” in Missouri is relatively new, as the enabling legislation was just passed in 2022. Nevertheless, these waivers raise several issues that will be worth watching (more on that below).

But first, some background: Collectively known as the “Success-Ready Students Network,” (SRSN) this group of districts—heavily influenced by the Aurora Institute and supported by Kauffman—describes its innovation work as so:

SRSN organizes Innovation Zones to support the work of moving to a competency-based learning (CBL) system. The Innovation Zones provide a space where public school educators, partners and stakeholders engage in high quality professional learning. That learning is used locally to support school improvement efforts, and statewide to inform system design.

This description suggests that SRSN’s focus is less on assessments per se and more on competency-based learning, with the pursuit of this particular waiver aimed at removing measurement barriers in the service of advancing personalized learning structures and processes. The vision is for students to progress at their own pace—so one can understand how an annual summative test could be seen by SRSN as working at cross purposes with the goal of individual students mastering content on different timelines.

This bring us to the first issue: The shortsightedness that annual assessments are to be viewed primarily as an accountability roadblock. SRSN’s intention seems rooted in a laudable desire to positively impact teaching and learning, but this author can’t help shake the feeling that standardized state assessments are being treated here as an afterthought of sorts. Now in fairness, this is not an issue limited to Missouri, but a much larger, intractable challenge of not seeing the utility of the data afforded by statewide exams.

Second, there’s a likelihood of creating additional confusion by holding a subset of districts accountable to some requirements, but not others. Notably, the waivers did not release these schools and districts from federal testing requirements. To wit, the waiver’s guidelines note, “Any requirement imposed by federal law are excluded [from this waiver].” However, it remains to be seen how the state can clearly report out on the performance of each district under both federal and (loosened) state guidelines. Each of these districts will be held harmless under state accountability for three years under these innovation waivers, but they will continue to improve (or regress) in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

Third, it will be worth watching the process involved in pursuing a federal waiver. While SRSN plans to work collaboratively with the state, it’s unclear who will be leading who. The participating LEAs are eager to move quickly on securing D.C.’s imprimatur, but the state wisely recognizes that there’s a lot of work yet to be done. For example, there isn’t any evidence to suggest comparability between the state’s current test and what SRSN is proposing. With designs on eventually expanding statewide, the U.S. Department of Education will have to hold firm on the core requirements of federal law and evaluate whether any waiver request from the state is justifiable.

Along these lines, it’s worth underscoring the significant differences between what Montana is doing (see my last post for more details) and what Missouri has in mind. The former is field testing one exam during one academic year. The latter is looking at a handful of different assessments over the course of three years. In this sense, what Missouri is contemplating is far more complicated (i.e., more time and more assessments). With complexity comes both greater opportunity as well as a heightened risk for failure. Food for thought as Missouri’s effort continues to take shape.