Assessment Synergies and Tensions in the United States

• In Event: Synergy and Tension Between Large-Scale and Classroom Assessment: International Trends

Abstract

Objective: To draw on policy and research to describe the tensions and synergies between large-scale assessment and classroom teaching, learning, and assessment in the United States.

Perspectives and Findings: Accountability has been a feature of the assessment landscape in the U.S. for the past three decades, and came to dominate when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the nation’s major law governing public schools, was enacted in January 2002. NCLB mandated annual testing against state standards for students in grades 3-8 in reading and mathematics, and intensified the consequences for schools that did not make ‘adequate yearly progress.’ The axiom ‘what gets tested gets taught’ was realized in schools, resulting in a narrowing of curriculum and instruction (Dee & Jacobs, 2010).

The testing requirements of NCLB were retained in NCLB’s replacement, the Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) of 2015. Large-scale assessments enshrined in NCLB and ESSA are primarily informed by research focused on psychometric models and represent content domains as the end-points of learning (Shepard, 2019). Such assessments are not designed for instructional purposes, and so have little utility for informing ongoing teaching and learning in the classroom (Perie, Marion, & Gong, 2009).

In an effort to redress the balance between classroom and large-scale assessment advocated by the seminal report Knowing What Students Know (KWSK) (NRC, 2001), many states proposed ‘balanced’ assessment systems, which generally included end-of the-year state assessments, interim assessments, administered several times each year to monitor progress toward standards, and formative assessment. Mostly, though, such systems did not correspond to the vision of a coordinated system of multiple assessments working together to collectively support a common set of learning goals, which KWSK advocated.

More ambitious learning standards were adopted by states beginning in 2010, at which time the federal government funded two consortia to develop new assessments aligned to them. No doubt, the consortia assessments were an improvement on previous end-of-year assessments. Nonetheless, because their purpose is to measure learning against grade-level standards at the end of the year, they have limited utility for informing teaching and learning day by day.

Significance: ESSA made provision for a limited number of states to develop innovative assessment systems that support student learning, and some states are currently attempting to do this. It remains to be seen if these innovations can lead to assessments that better balance value to classroom practice and accountability.

Author

• Margaret Heritage, WestEd