The Assessment Marinera

• In Event: Promoting Data Use in Education: Promises and Pitfalls

Abstract

In Peru there is a folk dance called the Marinera where the partners swerve around each other but never actually touch. The American education system has a similar dance that might be called the Assessment Marinera in which assessment data useful for instructional improvement and the assessment data used for system monitoring move to completely different rhythms. The extent to which assessments interplay is a fundamental topic in education, as an enormous amount of time, attention, and resources are expended on data production. Here I examine the knowledge base around interim assessments and review how they fit within more frequent classroom assessments and annual tests. I first set the context by providing a brief history of recent trends in the American assessment system, describing emerging conceptions of how interim assessments might fit into a more integrated system of assessments. Next, I provide a summary of the research on classroom assessments and annual high stakes testing, focusing on their purposes, strengths weaknesses, and what might be extracted from their research base to inform our considerations of what form interim assessments might take. Third, I provide a review of the current research on interim assessments, examining ways that they are being developed and researched both for policy purposes and instructional purposes. I find that to date most interim assessments are designed more as policy instruments rather than instructional improvement instruments, which results in a further weighting of the assessment system towards accountability functions without attending to the important role of assessment as a capacity building tool. Finally, I consider both the promise of interim assessments to improve the quality of instructional knowledge; how they might be positioned amidst classroom assessments and annual, high stakes assessments to form a more seamless system of assessments; as well as suggesting future research that might deepen the utility of interim assessments to leverage improvements in the education system.

Author

• Jonathan A. Supovitz, University of Pennsylvania