In recent weeks, several CenterLine posts have addressed how states, districts, and schools should consider using assessment to support instruction when school begins again in the fall. We are pleased to share this guest post by Kristen Huff of Curriculum Associates with her perspective on this important topic.

Since school closures and remote learning became the norm, I have received emails from school and district leaders relevant to COVID-19 achievement gaps asking some variation of this question:

All states closed their schools in March and suspended or canceled annual state assessments. While the US Department of Education (USED) immediately waived state testing requirements for 2020, some states are contemplating the administration of their summative state assessments next fall; purportedly to help leaders and educators better understand and respond to the impact of school closures on student learning. Although this may seem appealing, these assessments are no better suited to informing instructional decisions than they have been in the past.

Schools have dismissed students to enforce social distancing and have implemented remote learning for the rest of the 2019-20 school year. Learning has probably been more uneven than usual across students, classrooms, grades, schools, districts, and even states, which presents challenges for instructional planning, including planning for fall educational assessment. Selecting an appropriate assessment to inform instruction requires understanding what information you need, and what information the assessment provides

Graduates today, more than ever, will need to navigate the economic shifts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic by independently resetting goals, adapting quickly, and applying what they’ve learned to solve new and novel problems. Skills such as these are commonly known as the “21st Century skills” and during these changing times, the ability to demonstrate these skills may make the difference between success and failure.

Juan D’Brot and the Center are pleased to host this post prepared by Juan with contributions from his colleagues on the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation: Brad Watts, Julie Morrison, and Jennifer Merriman. The JCSEE's mission is to develop and promote standards for conducting high-quality evaluations through the use of the Program Evaluation Standards.

Jal Mehta, author of In Search of Deeper Learning, was recently interviewed by Rick Hess about how to support deeper learning during the COVID-19 shutdown and remote learning.

As seen by our growing list of recent CenterLine posts, professionals at the Center for Assessment are actively thinking about how to approach the loss of large-scale assessment and accountability data for this school year and its impact on monitoring student performance: 

In late winter-early spring 2020, COVID-19 school disruptions became mainstream across the U.S. States and communities implemented policies for “social distancing,” resulting in students schooling from home, which interrupted state assessment schedules in every state. 

Canceling state assessments and local schooling have implications for several other state policies and programs, ranging from federal school accountability designations to determining how students could earn credits and graduate.

The COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) global pandemic is having far-reaching effects in all facets of our lives. The impact on student education has been discussed in general terms in the media relative to school closures, and we at the Center for Assessment have been adding to the conversation by giving our thoughts on how changes to statewide assessment administrations may impact state efforts toward measuring student growth for the current and subsequent academic years.