What Schools Could Use Instead Of Standardized Tests
Close your eyes for a minute and daydream about a world without bubble tests.
Education Week recently reported that some Republican Senate aides are doing more than dreaming — they're drafting a bill that would eliminate the federal mandate on standardized testing.
Annual tests for every child in reading and math in grades 3 through 8, plus one in high school, have been a centerpiece of federal education law since 2002. No Child Left Behind, the current incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires them.
But this law has been overdue for reauthorization since before President Obama took office. The Senate plans to take the matter up early this year.
Discussions about cutting back on these requirements comes at a time of growing concern about the number of tests kids take and the time they spend taking them. Parents in some communities have formed "opt-out" groups and removed their children not only from federally mandated tests, but also the legions of state and district-required tests that have followed in their wake.
The Council of Chief State School Officers and the country's largest school districts have spoken out in favor of reducing the number of standardized tests students take. The national teachers' unions and other traditionally Democratic groups are on board with the idea too.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he's concerned about testing too, but he's written he "strongly believes" in annual tests as an educational tool.
Missing from this debate, however, is a sense of what could replace annual tests. What would the nation do to monitor learning and ensure equity and accountability if states didn't have to test every child every year?
Here are four possible answers. They're not necessarily exclusive of each other. In fact, they could all happen at the same time, as different states and districts make different decisions.
1) Sampling. A simple approach. The same tests, just fewer of 'em. Accountability could be achieved at the district level by administering traditional standardized tests to a statistically representative sampling of students, rather than to every student every year.
That's how the "Nation's Report Card" works. Formally known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, it's one of the longest-running and most-trusted tests in the U.S. education arsenal, even though it's not attached to high stakes. It's given to a different sample of students each year, in grades 4, 8, and 12. The widely respected international test, PISA, is given to a sample of students too.
2) Stealth assessment. Similar math and reading data, but collected differently.
The major textbook publishers, plus companies like Dreambox, Scholastic and the nonprofit Khan Academy, all sell software for students to practice math and English. These programs register every single answer a student gives.
The companies that develop this software argue that it presents the opportunity to eliminate the time, cost and anxiety of "stop and test" in favor of passively collecting data on student's knowledge over a semester, year or an entire school career. Valerie Shute, a professor at Florida State University and former principal research scientist at ETS, coined the term "stealth assessment" to describe this approach.
Stealth assessment doesn't just show what skills a student has mastered at a given What Schools Could Use Instead Of Standardized Tests : NPR Ed : NPR:
