Three Qualms About Standardized Tests and How the Common Core Consortia Hope to Address Them

Standardized testing is one of the most polarizing topics in education policy. Policymakers have advocated for tests as an objective measure of both teacher and student performance. Teachers, though, largely despise the tests, the preparation for them, and the time it takes away from classroom instruction in the springtime.

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Proponents of the Common Core State Standards say relief is on the way: With new state standards will come new assessments in 2014-2015, aimed at providing teachers a more thorough report on their students’ progress that will ultimately help them drive instruction. During a recent webinar, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) explained how they are tackling three common criticisms of today’s standardized tests:

1) “These tests represent three days out of the 180 day school year. They do not show that the student who came into fourth-grade reading at a second-grade level actually gained a full year. They only show that the student is not performing at grade level.”—Elementary School Teacher (in a recent survey from Scholastic and the Gates Foundation)

In other words, today’s assessments do not inform instruction. Diagnostically speaking, when a student is labeled as “Not Proficient” it isn’t exactly useful for showing where the child is struggling. If a student fails a fifth-grade math exam, at what level are they learning? “Not fifth grade” is no longer an acceptable answer. SBAC is planning to use “computer adaptive testing”, the same type the GRE uses. The test will assign progressively easier or harder questions, as the test adapts to the student’s performance in real-time.  In the webinar, Sue Gendron, policy advisor for SBAC, explained this will allow the test to be custom-tailored for each student. Another benefit will be greater precision when grading.  Fifth-grade students may receive third-grade questions if they are unable to perform at a fifth-grade level, allowing educators to determine precisely where their students are performing.

2)  “We say we are concerned about education because our adult citizens need to be flexible thinkers, ready to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances of the global marketplace. But making standardized tests the center of our curriculums tells children the most important thing they need to learn in school is how to arrive at predetermined answers on the tests.” – Anne Stone and Jeff Nichols writing for SchoolBook

Teaching to the test is probably the most frequently heard criticism of assessments. Sixty percent of teachers in another recent survey remarked that in the past few years, more class time has been devoted to teaching test-taking skills. Some schools even report entire classes dedicated to it. These classes focus on strategies, such as the process of elimination, as opposed to actual learning. Even worse, in an effort to raise test scores, a teacher may emphasize “factoids,” rather than a rich understanding of each subject.

Both consortia are trying to change this by moving away from the “bubble test” format. In addition to “selected response” questions, SBAC promises the addition of constructed response, technology-enhanced constructed response, and performance tasks. To give an example of how a performance task might alleviate the teach-to-the-test mantra, let’s take a look at fractions. A student may be able to memorize what 2/3 looks like without actually knowing what it means. But this sample question requires students to have a complete understanding of fractions: instead of giving the student a visual display of a fraction and asking for a simple identification, the question asks students to create a spinner with “10 or fewer congruent sectors” so that “the probability of an arrow landing… is greater than ¼ and less than ½”. This question requires the student to apply a critical understanding of fractions, and not just recall a fact.

3) “In short, our educational culture reflects our popular literary culture in its obsession with memoir. We are constantly asking kids to reflect on their personal experiences, but we aren’t expecting them to engage seriously, in writing, with news, political arguments, or historical debates.” – Dana Goldstein

I’m in full agreement that writing assessments are subpar.  One of the writing prompts I had in fourth grade was so atrocious, I still remember it: “Write what would happen if a squirrel went loose in your classroom.” Yikes! Fortunately, the consortia are hoping to improve the writing process in several ways. First, students will no longer be required to simply conjure up random arguments off the top of their heads and organize them in response to a (poorly-developed) prompt. The new assessments will require students to draw on evidence from sources to establish an argument, and different types of sources will be provided for students to use. During the webinar, Laura Slover, senior vice president of PARCC, gave an example of how this would occur: “(Students) go into a staged Google site, (look) at a variety of sources, whether they are text or graphics or pictures and then use those pieces of evidence to write an extended essay in which they’re asked to make an argument and develop it.”

Today, students who receive low scores on writing assessments (and their teachers) may not understand what steps should be taken to improve writing skills. The new Common Core assessments hope to address this concern by evaluating students throughout the writing process: how they select and classify information, determine if sources are biased, adequately summarize ideas, analyze arguments, and present the findings in an essay. Each individual step within the writing process can now be assessed, and even more promising, these results can then be used to inform instruction.

Make no mistake: enriching high stakes assessments will be no easy task- and will be utterly impossible without continual feedback from teachers. Nonetheless, having policy makers even acknowledge these qualms is a definite step in the right direction.

Written by Education Sector policy intern Rikesh Nana.