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).

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. 

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.

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.

This is the fifth post by one of our 2021 summer interns based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they are addressing this summer with their Center mentors. Ella Anghel, from Boston College, is working with Nathan Dadey and Will Lorié in examining data from a game-based assessment to determine an approach to summarizing the data to provide useful information to teachers.

I was asked recently if the Center was producing assessment recommendations for back-to-school this fall. My first reaction was, “wait, didn’t we already do that?” When my pandemic-induced time fog finally cleared enough, I remembered that we produced a comprehensive set of recommendations with Rebecca Kockler and our colleagues at CCSSO for assessment in fall 2020.

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)