Standards-Based Assessment

Large-Scale Standards-Based Assessment

According to federal law, students must be tested in English/language arts (ELA) and in mathematics from Grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. Students are also tested in science at least once in elementary school, middle school, and high school. The results of these assessments are used to monitor student progress over time, to evaluate schools, and (in some states) to evaluate teachers or to determine which students may graduate from high school. As such, they are considered high-stakes tests with serious consequences. These uses are predicated on assumptions that the tests gauge the standards and that test scores reflect the extent to which teachers provided high-quality, standards-based instruction. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that standards-based assessments measure only a subset of state standards and also test skills omitted from standards altogether.

The match between standards and assessment is called alignment, and achieving strong alignment is difficult. Because of this, and because no single measure can provide an adequate picture of what people know or are able to do, several research organizations (the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, and the American Evaluation Association) recommend that accountability systems are based on more than just a single test score.

States determine which standards and assessments to implement, and there is variability in what is taught and assessed across states. To increase consistency in educational expectations nationwide, states joined forces to develop the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in ELA and math, which were adopted by 46 states in 2010 and 2011 (one of the states, Minnesota, only adopted the ELA portion). By late 2016, nine states announced they would replace or significantly revise the CCSS, but critics in some of these states say the new standards ended up being nearly identical to the CCSS. The CCSS set expectations in ELA and in mathematics for each grade level and are purported to emphasize higher order thinking and focus on literacy with respect to both fiction and nonfiction texts. National standards have also been developed in science (the Next Generation Science Standards), and state departments of education and professional associations have developed standards in a wide array of other content areas.

[Page 1606]Using federal funding, two consortia of states developed assessments that together were administered by 28 states in 2015–2016. Both the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test are computer administered, and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test is computer adaptive. Computer-adaptive tests tailor each test to examinees who are given items of increasing or decreasing difficulty based on their level of success with prior items. Both assessments are also designed as full-scale testing systems. They include a summative test, similar to prior standards-based large-scale tests, and also provide (a) optional interim assessments that teachers can administer throughout the school year to monitor student progress and (b) resources to help teachers conduct CCSS-aligned formative assessment.

...