This post is the follow-up to my previous post discussing the realities of innovation in large-scale educational assessment. In Part 1, I defined innovation as a change that not only improved an existing process or product, but also was found to have solved a problem or meet a need and, therefore, was adopted and used; that is, it changed the way things were done in the field.  

The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) ostensibly offers states the flexibility needed to “establish, operate, and evaluate an innovative assessment system” with the goal of using that educational assessment to meet the ESSA academic assessment and statewide accountability system requirements. 

This is the second in a series of CenterLine posts by our 2019 summer interns and their Center mentors based on their project and the assessment and accountability issues they addressed this summer. Nikole Gregg from James Madison University worked with Brian Gong on how states have attempted to promote equity through the design of their ESSA accountability systems.

Without a doubt, the public is skeptical about using machine scoring for examinees’ written responses. This skepticism makes sense because we know that machines do not score all elements of writing equally well. Machines do not “understand” creativity, irony, humor, allegory, and other literary techniques, opening them to criticism for their insufficiency in evaluating some of these more subtle qualities of writing. 

I was an early supporter and promoter of the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), but I now have serious doubts about the viability of the IADA and its ability to support deep and meaningful educational reform.