Years of Learning: Relating Changes in Student Attainment to Time

Session Type: Coordinated Paper Session

Abstract

One of the most prominent ways that educational assessment has entered into main stream media over the last several years is in discussions of the academic impact associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., learning loss). Numerous headlines have been written communicating the negative impacts of the pandemic on student academic achievement. In most cases, to facilitate communication with the general public, academic impact is reported as months or years or learning. For example, headlines declaring that students lost several months of learning were common. In terms of concise communication, there is a clear advantage to using years of learning as a measure of academic impact over more standard indicators like effect size. Current president of NCME Andrew Ho weighed in on the subject on Twitter declaring his support for reporting academic impact in terms of months of learning despite potential technical shortcomings to better communicate results to non-technical stakeholders. But do the benefits of simplicity outweigh the risks of misinterpretation? In this coordinated session we present papers that highlight the subtle psychometric and practical issues that underlie the conversion of changes in academic attainment to exposure time to learning.

Sub Unit

• Individual Papers, Innovation Demonstrations, Coordinated Sessions, or Organized Discussions

Session Organizer

• Damian Betebenner, NATIONAL CENTER FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT

Individual Presentations

• Vertical Scale Design and Years of Learning - Sanford R Student, University of Delaware; Derek Christian Briggs, University of Colorado Boulder; Laurie Davis, CURRICULUM ASSOCIATES

• Using Growth Norms to (In)Validate Years of Learning - Damian Betebenner, NATIONAL CENTER FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT; Charles DePascale, Psychometric Confections, LLC

• Contrasting Years of Learning Approaches Using a Common Scale - Eric Stickney, Renaissance