We all want assessment innovation, but at what cost?
By Chad Aldeman and Dale Chu In a report for FutureEd last month, Lynn Olson and Tom Toch advocate for a “matrix sampling” approach to federally required achievement tests. Basically, instead of testing all kids in grades 3-8, states could test just a sample of students and still get high-level accountability results. As Dale noted […]
Breaking the assessment stalemate
By Dale Chu The fine folks at FutureEd, specifically Lynn Olson and Tom Toch, just released a thoughtful new report titled, “None of the Above: A New Vision for State Standardized Testing.” (Intrepid readers of this blog will recall my interview with Olson a few years back.) The authors provide a primer on the history […]
State test results are still too d*mn slow
By Dale Chu In April, Alaska published its 2023 state assessment results, making it the final one to publicly release its assessment data for that academic year. This came at a time when students were preparing to take the 2024 exams. Which is to say, states continue to be notoriously slow when it comes to […]
Reading the assessment tea leaves
By Dale Chu Even though the energy and enthusiasm for standardized testing seems to have stalled out, there’s no shortage of new developments. Here are four worth highlighting, though how to interpret them I’ll leave to you, dear reader: 1. Stick a fork in Carnegie’s new education initiative: A thought-provoking read by Max Eden on […]
March Mathness: Using assessments to support student numeracy
By Dale Chu This month, the Collaborative For Student Success announced a March Mathness tournament, which aims to shine a spotlight on promising practices to improve upon America’s dismal performance in mathematics. Yours truly was tasked, along with my estimable colleagues Chad Aldeman and Jocelyn Pickford, to wade through an assortment of initiatives—ranging from statewide […]
The pernicious predictability of anti-testing advocates
By Dale Chu A viral TikTok video posted earlier this week served up some freshly warmed-over disparagement of annual assessments. The digital screed was prompted by an opinion column’s review of a new paper by Jamil Maroun and Chris Tienken purporting to debunk the use of standardized tests as a credible measure of student learning. […]
Can AI help bridge the divide between state assessment data and the public?
By Dale Chu A new AI tool debuted last December that complements the work we’ve been doing here at AssessmentHQ to monitor the reporting of state summative test results. Developed by Emily Oster, Zelma aims to make assessment data “more widely accessible and engaging for the general public.” USA Today and The 74 covered the […]
Portrait of an assessment
By Dale Chu It’s the trend that’s sweeping the nation: the “portrait of a graduate.” The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s President Tim Knowles says, “They’re everywhere.” To wit, at least seventeen states have adopted (or are in the process of developing) one with the goal of establishing an agreed-upon sets of skills […]
Can Uncle Sam be believed on assessment innovation?
By Dale Chu The Monday of the week leading into Thanksgiving, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter announcing changes to the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA), the federal government’s underwhelming-to-date mechanism for encouraging states to pilot, develop, and deploy the next generation of state assessments. Under the current administration, Uncle […]
The Biden administration’s unseriousness on PISA
By Dale Chu The latest PISA results dropped earlier today and, perhaps to no one’s surprise, they weren’t good. U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in math, which was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S., according to the OECD. This morning’s headlines summarize the bad news: “U.S. students’ math […]