Part V of this week’s Five Principles for Smarter Data Systems series–a guest post from Ben Boer, Senior Policy Associate at Advance Illinois:
Education Sector’s five principles for use of data re-imagine the relationship between data and education. Today, too much good data lives in silos — in state agencies, in districts, in schools, even at [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'Assessment'
Smarter Data Systems: The Data-Assessment Partnership
First Take: $350m Assessment Competition Guidelines
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education released its initial overview of the competition process for the $350 million in stimulus funding set aside to improve student assessment (see Education Week’s helpful summary).
What We’ve Learned
It’s All About Accountability: Not surprising, but important to distinguish that ED’s plans are for assessments related to current NCLB mandates–reading [...]
Crossing the Assessment Innovation Chasm
The announcement of a new National Science Foundation grant to the University of Wisconsin to further develop a game-based science and math learning program, along with an associated assessment system, caught my eye. It’s the exact type of promising technology-enabled assessment system that I wrote about in “Beyond the Bubble.” It’s also a good opportunity [...]
Improving Assessment: Getting from Here to There
In our op-ed earlier this week, my colleague Elena Silva and I reflected on Secretary Duncan’s Race to the Top “moon shot:”
The secretary wisely prods states to expand public charter school options, improve the quality of teaching, and address failing schools. But, unless his plans for improving our underlying navigational instruments—the tests that generate the [...]
Will Race to the Top Spur a New Generation of Assessment?
Perhaps. Significantly improving student assessment is the real “moon shot” for the stimulus funds.
A new Education Week article highlights the potential impact of these funds:
What now seems to be an intractable choice between richer tasks and reliable data, though, could be mediated by advancements in technology that could improve access, cost, and reliability of performance-based [...]
Assessing the Common Core
I’m at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) assessment conference, so naturally there was a big plenary session focused on the common core standards work (led in part by CCSSO). But, even though the session was held before hundreds of assessment experts—and despite Secretary of Education Duncan’s commitment of $350 million in stimulus [...]
More Standards, Please
Why is a highly promising, successfully piloted technology that can help resolve a number of important issues around testing students with special needs — and save money — still sitting on the shelf?
In this case, the barrier is getting the tools to integrate into current testing processes and software platforms. Sounds complex and geeky, but [...]
Scaling Innovation in Assessment (in China)
While the rest of the policy world is at the national charter school love fest conference, I’m in Los Angeles at the national student assessment conference.
I had one of my more disturbing, but unfortunately, not surprising, conversations yesterday after a session where I learned more about an innovative, NSF-funded science assessment project. “What’s next?” I [...]
The Test for Cyber Schools
Interesting article in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on the fate of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools—publicly funded, fully online schools that students “attend” on a full-time basis. With over 19,000 students, the state is a bellwether for the growth of cyber charter schools. Many of these schools are facing renewal decisions at the end of their five [...]
President Obama Joins the Bubble-Bursting Bandwagon
“And I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test…”
I couldn’t agree more, Mr. President. But, as always, the devil is in the details. The Education Sector report Beyond the Bubble details how technology, along [...]
Open for Discussion: The Future of Student Assessment
There is one place where you can find a rare consensus among NCLB proponents, critics, teachers, and policymakers—none are really satisfied with the state of testing today. At a time when students are tested more than ever—and test results are used to make critical judgments about the performance of schools, teachers, and students—our testing methods [...]
Lessons from Grey’s Anatomy?
Beyond the Bubble discusses how technology can provide opportunities to improve student assessment. The report briefly highlights iStan, a life-like, sensor filled mannequin used by medical and nursing schools to simulate patient interactions and responses.
Medical education is obviously very different from K-12. But, it’s not so different that we can’t learn from the practice. Examples [...]
Beyond the Bubble (cont.)
Below, Chad highlighted my new Education Sector report on technology and the future of student assessment. In the report, I show how technology can help to both deepen and broaden assessment practice–by assessing more comprehensively and by assessing new skills and concepts.
Beyond the Bubble, of course, refers to the multiple choice question types that dominate [...]
Stalled at Launch
In K-12 education we have long debates about the purposes of public schooling, whether the focus should be on the basics or 21st century skills or if that’s even a useful distinction, the best ways to assess student learning, how to contruct accountability systems that do more harm than good, etc. But underyling that discussion [...]
Beyond the Bubble
During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama frequently made comments like this one from April, where he said too much time was spent, “preparing students for tests that do not provide any valuable, timely feedback on how to improve a student’s learning. Creativity has been drained from classrooms as too many teachers are forced [...]
"No, we don’t cheat. And even if we did, I’d never tell you."
Tommy Lasorda was talking baseball, but there are edu-implications. Gotham Schools is covering some back and forth about the process of grading the New York state ELA (English Language Arts) assessments. Eva Moskowitz says it’s easy and shouldn’t take so long, but teacher/grader/blogger “Miss Brave” says it’s disorganized and potentially unfair. Scoring problems are not [...]
Science Magazine Enters the Arena
I recommend the January 2, 2009 issue of SCIENCE, containing a special section on education and technology. With articles on subjects such as cognitive tutors, open education resources, and technology and testing, it’s a worthy read (pesky subscription required, view overview and article abstracts). More importantly, the edition represents a welcome commitment by the magazine [...]
A Thousand Words
The graph above shows a group of schools in Denver, Colorado, courtesy of the State Department of Education. The numbers have some interesting implications for how to think about poverty, achievement, growth, and accountability in K-12 education.
Each of the circles represents an individual school. The size of the circle is a function of enrollment–the bigger [...]
iStan, High School Football, and Data-Driven Reflection
It looked like a makeshift MASH unit from the outside. But inside it was filled with flat-panel monitors displaying patient vital signs, a real-time video feed, and in the middle of the room, a surgical table. iStan, a life-like, sensor filled mannequin, occupied the middle of the table and waited for a team of medical [...]
Testing the Limits
Measuring Up, Harvard professor Daniel Koretz’s new book on educational testing, is making the rounds in the education policy and blogging worlds. My review, the latest installment in Education Sector’s “What We’re Reading” series, is now live on the ES Web site.
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.