Embedded Assessments: An End Around Parental Opt-Outs
Over the last several years, a major point of contention between parents and the education establishment (both federal and state) has been the issue of testing. Especially as states have responded to federal mandates by administering unvalidated assessments aligned to the Common Core national standards, parents across the country have begun, with varying degrees of success, to opt their children out of those assessments. The new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) perpetuates the federal testing mandates, so the opt-out movement will continue.
But the education establishment is now colluding with Big Data to obliterate opting out. How? By promoting “embedded assessment” within the digital-learning platforms that are gradually replacing teacher-led instruction. As students interact with these sophisticated platforms, the software collects millions of data points on each child and can assess exactly what “skills” he has mastered and where he needs further training. (Modern progressive education is about skills rather than knowledge, and training rather than education.) Embedded assessment means each student’s performance will be assessed every moment, in real time, through analysis of keystrokes and perhaps even physiological reactions. Because ultimately the periodic “summative assessment” – the end-of-course or end-of-year test — will disappear, so will parents’ ability to protect their children from the testing.
The concept of embedded assessment has a certain appeal. If students are being assessed Embedded Assessments: An End Around Parental Opt-Outs | Truth in American Education:
