For those hoping for minimal disruption to ESSA school accountability, I have bad news and more bad news.    

The bad news is that school accountability as we know it is entirely offline for 2020. Before the calendar even flipped to April, the U.S. Department of Education granted waivers to all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Bureau of Indian Education.  

This is the final installment in a three-part series on the future of large-scale state assessment and accountability. Of course, it is impossible to know the future, but forecasts for educational assessment can be informed by examining what has shaped state assessment and accountability in the past. 

According to Education Week, “as of March 23, 2020, 7:31 p.m. ET: 46 states have decided to close schools. Combined with district closures in other states, at least 123,000 U.S. public and private schools are closed, are scheduled to close, or were closed and later reopened, affecting at least 54.8 million students”.

Like many of you, I’m closely following the news of the growing threat associated with the COVID-19 virus. Obviously, it is a difficult time for many and my primary thoughts are with those whose health or welfare are directly affected.  

During this time, education leaders are grappling with tough decisions regarding whether to close schools or suspend activities. These decisions have many wide-ranging implications, and one such implication we’re focused on at the Center is the short- and long-term impact to assessment and accountability systems. 

Last fall, Senior Associate Juan D’Brot was elected to the executive committee of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, formed in 1975 as a coalition of professional associations in the United States and Canada concerned with the quality of evaluation practice. 

How do schools improve? More importantly, how can school improvement be sustained over time and at scale? 

Here at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, we think a lot about the multiple factors involved in promoting student learning through more meaningful state assessment and accountability systems. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the current authorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is the most significant influence on contemporary state assessment and accountability.  We believe a number of changes to ESEA could help promote innovation, restore balance, and improve outcomes.

As 2019 drew to a close I had the chance to reflect on the conversations I've had with many of my colleagues throughout the year, and one topic of conversation that sticks out to me is frustration about the minimal value-add of work focused on large scale assessment and state-level accountability systems to the student experience. 

Developing a Better Understanding the Role of Assessment and Accountability in Improving Student Outcomes

If you've ever worked with someone from the Center, been in a Center staff meeting, or even had dinner with someone from the Center, you know that we refer to Theories of Action incessantly. It may sound wonky and weedy (and it is), but there's a reason why we value it so much. That's because a theory of action (TOA) can help us clarify what we truly believe should happen if a program or system is implemented. 

Defining a Theory of Action to Help Guide Longer-Term Goals

This post is Part 2 of a three-part series on competency-based grading. Part 1 described the key similarities and differences between traditional, standards-based, and competency-based grading practices.