Testing: Should We Test During the Pandemic? (Hechinger Report Opinion here)

How about adaptive tests that are shorter because they zero in on skills and knowledge levels of each learner?
How about giving these tests 3 times a year instead of long tests at the end of the year?
How about having immediate results so that teachers, students, and families know what gaps need filling, skills need practice, gains need celebrating?
Two states are currently working on replacing end of year summative tests (like Smarter Balanced) with these MAP online adaptive tests given three times a year and providing guidance immediately to teachers instead of sending information to the next year’s teacher on last year’s student.
Read about it here:
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-21-should-state-assessments-be-split-up-testmaker-nwea-thinks-so
Assessments are valuable if they guide, incite, accelerate, or reward learning. For many students, assessments do not deliver any of those positive benefits. In fact, for many, tests bring anxiety, derail creative teacher instructional plans to bring student performance up through test prep, and cause them to feel discouraged or even ashamed.
(more…)The emergence of PBL (Project-Based Learning) has accelerated interest in “authentic assessment”– the evaluation of student work by rubric. This practice makes it possible for students to spend their time learning and for teachers to spend instructional time in support of student learning and progress rather than interrupting learning for testing or test prep.
(more…)The DOE website includes this information on Student Privacy. At the bottom is a link to the full page with more language resources.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that gives parents certain protections with regard to their children’s education records, such as report cards, transcripts, disciplinary records, contact and family information, and class schedules. As a parent, you have the right to review your child’s education records and to request changes under limited circumstances.
(more…)Teachers will benefit from personalized learning tools to help save them time and improve education outcomes for every student.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-the-national-k-12-testing-landscape.html