It has been a year since COVID-19 made it impossible for states to administer state assessment programs last spring. Since then, multiple studies using data from commercial “interim” assessments have been put forward to help the field understand the pandemic’s impact on student learning. Through these special “learning loss” studies, assessment vendors have attempted to shed light on the effects of COVID-19 on learning nationally. In this three-part CenterLine series, we address the practical implications of these studies for learning recovery.

It has been a year since COVID-19 made it impossible for states to administer state assessment programs last spring. Since then, multiple studies using data from commercial “interim” assessments have been put forward to help the field understand the pandemic’s impact on student learning. Through these special Covid-19 impact studies, assessment vendors have attempted to shed light on the effects of the pandemic on learning nationally. In this three-part CenterLine series, we address the practical implications of these studies for learning recovery.

To answer the question of what 2021 test scores will mean, I start by acknowledging that the interpretation of assessment results is always a process of reasoning from evidence, with some level of uncertainty. As with all things COVID, we expect to have more uncertainty this year, but we still have the tools to examine just how uncertain we are about the meaning of test scores in 2021.

Even as discussions continue about the merits of state testing in 2021, the reality is that many states will soon begin spring administration. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has not waived or relaxed the assessment requirements specified in the Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA). While some states have applied for testing waivers in 2021, at the time of writing, no waivers have been granted. Questions about whether or how to test must soon be overshadowed by questions like “How should we communicate the results?”

This is the second in a series of three posts on planning for the examination of the validity of scores collected through remote test administration. In the first post, Michelle Boyer and Leslie Keng laid out the reasons why states should be concerned about the effect of remote testing on the comparability of score meaning. In the third post in this series, we will discuss specific challenges to score interpretations for remotely-administered tests.  

To some extent, trying to address the many challenges that the pandemic presents for K-12 education has been like steering a ship in a storm without the benefit of the ability to predict the storm’s duration or path with any confidence.

Many changes are being considered for schools in 2020-2021 and beyond in the era of COVID-19 and disruptions to schooling. Some of these include later school-year starts, blended instructional models for all students, full-on virtual delivery of content, and an extended school year to account for lost instructional time. Add to this the very real social and emotional needs of both students and adults and we need to be holistically considering school restart.

The Center’s Executive Director Scott Marion was asked recently to offer a short response to the question,“How can parents and policymakers know whether schools are making up for lost learning and addressing individual needs?” as part of a series on what it will take to reopen schools amid the pandemic sponsored by The Center on Reinventing Public Education, in partnership with T

We cannot know what classrooms and teaching will look like in the coming school year, but that doesn’t need to prevent states from planning ahead for accurately equating spring 2021 summative assessments. In making that statement we assume that those tests will happen and their blueprints and administration will be unaltered while acknowledging that the conditions of learning may be very different than in the past.

Since mid-March, Center for Assessment associates and highly-respected guest authors have written multiple CenterLine posts and other papers addressing key aspects of assessment and accountability. We have been wrestling with this question since COVID-19 disrupted the 2019-2020 school year and forced the cancellation of spring 2020 state assessments: How can assessment best be used to support teachers and students during the 2020-2021 school year? Our ideas and advice over the past several months about assessment in 2020-2021 crystallized into the following key takeaways: