Using alternatives to high-stakes testing

As the national debate about the value of high-stakes tests continues, spring testing season is upon us and the “opt-out” movement is alive and growing. And we are finally seeing some response to concerns raised by parents, students and, educators about high-stakes standardized tests.

The Federal government is pushing the question to states and school districts. In fact, the new Federal law, ESSA, allows states and districts to:

• Audit their existing assessment systems to reduce ineffective or redundant tests
• Apply for a grant to develop an alternative state assessment system
• Allow high school students to take alternative assessments, such as the ACT or SAT
• Limit the amount of testing as a percentage of the school year

But make no mistake, there are still many advocates who believe there are no substitutes for high stakes assessments. As educators, we know that’s just plain wrong. There are plenty of meaningful and useful alternatives to measure student success.

In her book, The Test, Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing, but You Don’t Have to Be, author and National Public Radio correspondent Anya Kamenetz, discusses several possibilities for measuring student achievement without the high-stakes havoc we see today:

Multiple Measures

• Add more and different kinds of data on student progress and school performance. Since longitudinal data systems are already tracking students in most states, measurement can take a “big-data” approach combining things like graduation rates, teacher-created assessment, discipline outcomes, etc.

Performance or portfolio-based assessments

• Schools already incorporate direct demonstrations of student learning into their assessments. Projects, individual and group presentations, reports, papers and portfolios of work that are collected over time– these metrics can be created on student data that is already available.

Sampling

• If groups say that they want to ensure equal outcomes, access and opportunities (which are all valid goals), more testing isn’t the way to achieve those goals. Sampling is a simple approach where districts administer traditional standardized tests but to a statistically representative sampling of students rather than to every student every year. That’s how the international test, PISA, is given, now and it’s the way the “Nation’s Report Card” data gathering also works.

A study by the Center for Collaborative Education reminds us that no one measure can do justice in assessing a students’ knowledge. WEA members, like the general population, have differing views about standardized tests. WEA encourages members to continue to recognize and advocate for using multiple measures to assess students, and to work to develop alternative methods of measuring student growth.