By Dale Chu Is testing a failed strategy? This was the implication by a prominent testing critic in a recent piece for The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, in which he outlined eleven pointed questions for state lawmakers and other policymakers as part of what he called...
By Dale Chu All eyes are on the Sunshine State in the wake of Governor Ron DeSantis’ call for retiring the state’s annual assessment system in favor of shorter “progress monitoring” tests. The move took some of the heat off of the state’s contentious mask debate...
By Dale Chu The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) recently published an interview with Dr. Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford University. Reardon is known for his scholarship and commitment to measuring educational opportunity, as well as bucking...
By Dale Chu Today, an impressive coalition of fifteen leading policy, advocacy, and member organizations wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona asking for clarity on how the federal government will provide guidance and oversight to states in fulfilling ESSA’s testing requirements for...
By Dale Chu The assessment-related news keeps on coming! Here are some noteworthy happenings in three states: Cheers Arkansas — Add another state to the list of five that are “doing it!” Last month, Arkansas reported that 97 percent of students participated in state assessments. Astute readers will...
By Dale Chu Tracking the dismaying trend in states like Texas and Indiana, test results in Florida, Tennessee, and now Louisiana have also shown dramatic dips in student performance—with bigger drops in math than in reading. In Florida, 52 percent of students are on grade level...
By Dale Chu As state testing data continues to roll in and as schools gear up for a new academic year, it’s not too soon to ask how the feds might handle assessment waivers in 2022. Indeed, the question is almost certainly not if, but when...
By Dale Chu On the heels of some particularly depressing test results from Texas, last week saw the release of another state’s spring assessment scores where the picture was no less grim. Results from Indiana revealed steep declines, highlighting the uneven toll of the pandemic that...
By Dale Chu As predicted, two consecutive years without state testing has provided the permission structure for some to begin questioning the utility of statewide standardized assessments. Take California as a prime example, where Uncle Sam afforded local jurisdictions an escape hatch from federal testing requirements...
By Dale Chu The original eduwonk, Andy Rotherham, penned a worthwhile read recently on where we find ourselves on K-12 testing, along with the inescapable tensions that are part and parcel of the competing interests and aspirations involved. Rotherham correctly observes that the “holy grail” are...