SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium

Report: Federal Rules Impede Competency-Based Learning

April 29, 2013 | 10:31 AM | By Katrina Schwartz

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Competency-based learning, which allows students to progress at their own pace after they’ve shown mastery of a subject, rather than by their age, is quickly gaining momentum. Already, a few states like New Hampshire, Maine, and Oregon are moving towards implementing competency-based learning models throughout the entire state. What’s more, 40 states have at least district experimenting with the model. But despite this growth, its proponents say federal policies for accountability and assessment are holding the movement back.

KnowledgeWorks, an organization that supports three education-focused initiatives — New Tech Network, EDWorks and Strive — recently released a report highlighting the pain points between federal policy and a competency-based system. The report, Competency Education Series: Policy Brief One [PDF], points out that, although the federal government has supported some aspects of competency-based learning, implementing the new model can be difficult because of federal restrictions.

“The greatest conflict stems from disconnect with the work on the ground and federal accountability and assessment systems,” the report states. “Implementers faced with this disconnect have no choice but to juggle two systems: one required by federal law and one developed by the educators, students, parents, and community leaders committed to successful implementation of competency education.”

CLASHES OVER TIME

Time is the biggest point of contention between the two systems. The federal government measures school accountability as well as student achievement through time-based modules. Seat time and annual test results are the primary ways that the government keeps schools accountable, Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, assessment, competency-based education, KnowledgeWorks, SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium

Will the New Online Standardized Tests Be Different?

October 10, 2012 | 9:11 AM | By MindShift

Sarah Garland

Fifth graders at Townsend Elementary in the Appoquinimink district waiting to begin the state standardized reading test.

By Sarah Garland

New high-tech standardized tests are coming soon to schools across the country, but will these new tests really revolutionize how we measure whether children are learning? The designers of the new tests, which a majority of states plan to adopt in two years, are allowing a sneak peek at sample questions.

Two competing state coalitions have taken on the job of designing the new tests, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, and both have posted examples of what’s coming on their websites.

In some questions, which the test designers have called “computer enhanced,” students will be asked to drag words or numbers across the screen, or to highlight phrases or sentences in a reading passage. In one example provided by Smarter Balanced to reporters during a conference call Monday, high school students can click on the screen to transfer water from a cube to a cylinder, which helps them solve a math problem about radius.

Fifth graders at Townsend Elementary in the Appoquinimink district waiting to begin the state standardized reading test. (Photo by Sarah Garland)

There will also be problems that require research and writing. Smarter Balanced officials gave an example of a multi-part question in which high school students are asked to imagine they are the chief of staff for a congresswoman. Before they start working on the test, their teacher is supposed Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, assessment, PARCC, SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium

Beyond the Bubble Test: How Will We Measure Learning in the Future?

July 15, 2011 | 3:41 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Flickr: Albertogp123

New technology-based assessments will replace standardized bubble tests.

Last September, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced: “Today is a great day! I have looked forward to this day for a long time–and so have America’s teachers, parents, students, and school leaders.”

Duncan was excited about a new way of testing students, one that goes “beyond the bubble test,” the standardized assessments students take every year that have long been criticized as not only useless in measuring any kind of real learning, but actually detrimental to the entire education system.

Ask most teachers, and you’ll hear a litany of reasons why they detest these assessments. They contend the current tests have no bearing on student learning. They waste time that could be better spent in class (the former president of United Teachers Los Angeles, “dismisses the weeks before spring testing as ‘Bubbling-In 101,’” according to a Los Angeles Times article.) They complain about having to teach to the tests, leaving them little time to try new ways of engaging students. And in some states, teachers are evaluated based on those very scores.

“If done incorrectly, the adoption of these assessments has the potential to lock our education system for another decade or more.”

With stakes so high, teachers, parents, and school administrators are watching the developments of the new tests closely. The actual details of what these new assessments will look like is being revealed along the way– and it’s extremely complicated. In brief, two separate groups — Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium — are using the federal government’s Race to the Top Funds to come up with the new testing systems, which will be used by different states. (You can read much more about the details in this recent story in Education Week.)

Both groups will create tests using technology in both administering and scoring and will measure “performance-based tasks, designed to designed to mirror complex, real-world situations,” according to the New York Times. Continue reading →