Most of us would agree that if the problem of improving K-12 educator assessment literacy has not been solved, it is not because of a lack of trying. A quick search of books with “assessment literacy” in the title, or a more general search for books on formative assessment or classroom assessment, returns many excellent resources written by esteemed researchers, practitioners, and scholars.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education’s (OSDE) highest priority is keeping students and staff safe so that we can focus on learning acceleration for all students. We are also intensely focused on how assessment can be used to help address these instructional and learning needs.  To this end, in this post, I discuss the importance of a balanced system of assessment and of being very intentional about the specific purposes and uses of types of assessment within that system, especially those intended to be used to support student learning and improved instruction. 

In a previous post I discussed the challenges of rebuilding accountability systems developed for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2021-2022. Prominent among these challenges is missing data due to multiple years of pandemic-related disruptions. What are the best alternatives to solve this problem? In this post I’ll suggest a tool, the performance profile, that may help address the issue of partially missing data.   

Assumptions lead to claims about the types of inferences and uses that an assessment system is intended to support. Strong assumptions require strong evidence. This axiom holds true for educational measurement and most other scientific endeavors. The current interest in through year assessments appears to be based on very strong assumptions about the multiple purposes through year assessments may serve. Is there evidence to support these assumptions?

Five states have been approved to implement innovative assessment pilots as part of the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As part of our 2021 Reidy Interactive Lecture Series (RILS) on assessment innovation, we thought it was critical to hear directly from these IADA leaders. 

This post is based on Charlie DePascale’s presentation during Session 1 of the virtual 2021 Reidy Interactive Lecture Series. Charlie, a Senior Associate at the Center from 2002 through 2019, enjoys writing, daily walks, and engaging in a smattering of consulting on educational assessment and accountability.

Equity is a value undergirding public educational systems. Educational equity is about beliefs, and beliefs are lived out through actions and choices made relative to pedagogy, assessment, and education policy. Culturally responsive education (CRE) is a mental model or mindset that can be applied to help close Equity gaps. There are many different frameworks for thinking about and applying CRE to design and evaluate culturally responsive classroom assessment.

In 2019-2020, the requirement to administer state summative assessments was waived for all states. In the absence of this data, many states and school districts leaned on commercial interim assessment data to inform programmatic and instructional decisions to a greater extent than they had in the past.