I titled my 2020 year-end CenterLine post, “Oh, What a Year!” with hopes that we were turning the pandemic corner. There’s no question the widespread availability of vaccines beginning in early spring 2021 gave us all a sense of hope only to have it dashed and renewed multiple times throughout this year following COVID’s ebb and flow.

“Through year” or “through course” assessment systems are rapidly proliferating as an alternative to the single, end-of-year administration of state accountability tests. There are at least ten states and associated assessment companies in various stages of exploration, design, and/or development of these systems.

This post is a summary of the main ideas from a symposium focused on educators’ assessment literacy presented at the 2021 NCME Classroom Assessment Conference. Slides from the session are available here. 

I and many others were concerned that the uncertainty with interpreting Spring 2021 state summative test scores because of all the “noise” associated with the pandemic would blur any signal we were trying to hear from the data. Unfortunately, that signal is so loud that we can’t miss it. In spite of any uncertainty, we have more than enough information to pull the policy alarm!

“Assessment practices do far more than provide information; they shape people’s understanding about what is important to learn, what learning is, and who learners are” (Moss, 2008, p. 254).

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. 

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.