Design Elements for Assessment & Accountability

In our last post, we discussed that the Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability should set college/career readiness as its organizing principle. In this post, we will detail recommendations, compiled from the business perspective, on key design elements for the testing and accountability system.
What we test is different from how Texas holds education leaders accountable for results. Accountability is the system of consequences or rewards for meeting expectations. As you may infer, a statewide testing system is not particularly effective, nor purposeful, without clear rewards or consequences.

Assessment – What we should test and how we should do it.

• The latest technology should be used to minimize paper testing. The Commission should solicit advice from leading software innovators which can largely eliminate paper testing, reduce costs, customize feedback and provide immediate diagnostic information.
• College/career readiness content should actually be assessed. If college/career readiness is the goal, assessments should determine whether students have learned that college-level math, science and English content. The SAT, ACT and TSI do so; the Texas end-of-course assessments (STAAR) required for graduation assess only a small percentage.

Currently, the end-of-course system assesses only 10th grade English, Algebra 1 and Biology...well short of what research says a student should know to be college ready. As a result, the Texas Education Agency will be forced to rely on projection methods, similar to the discredited Texas Projection Measure, to estimate whether 9th grade students might learn more to become college/career ready in the future. Sounds convoluted, right?

Let’s just assess college ready content and take the guesswork out of it.

• Assessments should determine what students master. For 20 years, Texas assessed whether students had mastered enough content in key subjects to be able to graduate. Some have argued it isn't fair to require 11th graders to demonstrate Algebra I knowledge because they may have taken the course years before. If the point of Algebra I is to master the content, shouldn't students be able to demonstrate they have retained it enough before they graduate and enroll in post-secondary education?

Let’s test students on college readiness before they go to college or the high performance workplace, not in middle school.

• Results need to be timely. This spring, we have worked with Central Texas districts to acquire real-time ACT, SAT and TSI data for the Class of 2016. The data is student-level so that their teachers can provide them supplemental education, if they are not college-ready.

One purpose of assessments is to identify student learning weaknesses and put that information quickly into the hands of educators so they can help. ACT, SAT and TSI performance (with an analysis of a student's strengths and weaknesses by content area) should be provided quickly and digitally to educators.

• Success should be mandated. TAMSA has argued that state standardized tests, if administered at all, should only be diagnostic and should not have consequences. However, we believe that if key state graduation tests become voluntary, student knowledge will erode. Nearly 95% of the Class of 2015 who failed one or more “required” graduation tests was still given a diploma...how long do you think that message will take to get out to the Class of 2016 struggling to learn basic math, English and writing?

This is Part II of a three part series.
Posted by Drew Scheberle, Senior Vice President of the Austin Chamber.