Held each fall since 1999, the Reidy Interactive Lecture Series (RILS) provides a unique opportunity for a diverse group of participants to step back and discuss timely and important topics in assessment and accountability. For RILS 2021 we will gather to consider how states can employ lessons from design thinking as they attempt to create innovative assessment system design.

We welcomed the Spring 2021 conference season with Center participation in national and regional conferences that occurred virtually in April. 

As it appears the country is finally turning the corner on the pandemic, we are excited at the prospect of doffing our masks, rolling up our sleeves, and focusing on the future of educational assessment and accountability through our 2021 summer internship program.

This fall, a batch of fresh new teachers, eager and anxious to start their careers, will enter into a context where interruptions in formal schooling across two school years have caused substantially different learning experiences for the students in their class. These teachers will be tasked with implementing strategies to identify initial student understandings and then support and monitor progress in learning. Supporting the assessment literacy of teachers through pre-service education and their early years of teaching is more important than ever. 

It is not difficult to understand the call for culturally sustaining pedagogy given the ubiquitous news reports of police brutality, racism, discrimination, and violence against African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and quite frankly, anyone not White. The sad fact is that this sentiment and these behaviors have been part of America’s fabric for hundreds of years.

Various states have advanced through-course proposals, in which states administer tests throughout the year rather than only once at the end. Some of these proposals come through the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA). Others are externally funded initiatives or proposed as a one-time spring 2021 replacement for traditional end-of-year state tests.

“…a collection of assessments does not entail a system any more than a pile of bricks entails a house.” Coladarci (2002)

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and yet expecting different results. Recently, I have been thinking about how this adage applies to innovative state assessment systems—those systems states are developing that offer new ways of measuring student proficiency for use in state accountability systems. I have concluded that one of the reasons that successful innovation in state assessment systems has been so rare is that we continue to ask states to implement innovative assessment systems before the state or the system is ready.

A year ago the pandemic changed everything, including the way we think about educational assessment. Although COVID-19 was well on its way to becoming a global pandemic in early 2020, it wasn’t until the second week of March that I, like many Americans, realized the full scale of the impact.  Then, the pandemic suddenly became one of those rare things that I never thought about until it was the only thing I thought about.