New Mexico: And the Razzie goes to…
By Dale Chu As I’ve made my way through states via the assessment power rankings, a question I sometimes get is which one has been the most egregious. An argument can be made for the nation’s capital, the only jurisdiction to receive an official pass from state testing, but they can’t be entirely faulted for […]
Assessments by the numbers
By Dale Chu With all of the coronavirus related news vis-à-vis testing, I’ve neglected to mention the exciting updates we’ve made to Assessment HQ’s Explore State Data tool. Here are some of the notable ones, which reflect state data released at the end of last year: – 33 states have comparable data from 2016 through 2019. […]
A test of resolve: A conversation with NewMexicoKidsCAN’s Amanda Aragon
By Dale Chu Amanda Aragon is the Executive Director of NewMexicoKidsCAN, a New Mexico-based policy and advocacy organization. Last summer, they released a report called A Test of Resolve: Reinforcing High Expectations & Student Progress in New Mexico, which analyzed the impressive gains New Mexico students have made since the state implemented a more rigorous […]
Two tensions in testing
By Dale Chu Last week, the Collaborative for Student Success and Education Week held a special event to mark the four-year anniversary of the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Participants took stock of the law’s impact thus far, and of the many conversations that took place, it became clear that for better […]
ESSA turns 4!
By Dale Chu Four years ago this month, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed into law. To mark the anniversary, the Collaborative for Student Success is hosting an event on December 10th at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The afternoon event will include remarks from some of ESSA’s congressional authors, […]
The dishonesty of the assessment debate
By Dale Chu New Mexican students in grades 3 through 8 will be taking a new state assessment this upcoming spring. The “New Mexico Measure of Student Success and Achievement” — which also goes by the shorter though no more elucidating acronym “NM-MSSA” —replaces the PARCC test after it was scrapped with much fanfare. These […]
Musical chairs and the politics of state assessments
By Dale Chu Over the summer, Tennessee signed a contract with their third company in five years to administer the state’s testing system. As demonstrated by the “Assessments by State” map on our homepage, the lack of consistency is hardly unique to the Volunteer State (though they’ve had a particularly bumpy ride). Not to be […]
States are closing the honesty gap, but will it last?
By Dale Chu Some honest-to-goodness good news today: The latest National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) study shows that states have raised the cut scores for proficiency on state tests. Both Education Week and U.S. News and World Report have strong write-ups on the study. What this news means is that the honesty gap—the discrepancy […]