Common standards, common exams?
At Tuesday's EdSector launch event, a segment of the conversation focused on EdSector's suggestion that many of the testing woes could be ameliorated with federal oversight or common standards. Put simply, 50 different states with 50 different standards and 50 different testing regimes is chaos and severely blunts successful accountability. Three states -- Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island -- recently made history by creating a consortium and developing a single exam for the trio: the New England Common Assessment. When the question was posed about challenges stopping other states from joining together in consortia, or, at the far end, a single national exam, Sharron Hunt, the director of testing for the Georgia Dept. of Ed., replied that the barrier was one of meshing standards.
Hunt suggested that it wasn't so much the content that was an issue (after all, as Thomas Toch pointed out, Georgia and Nebraska and Maine are all hopefully teaching the same reading and math skills), but rather the sequence. Since states teach various content at different times in the cirricula and sometimes in different grades, discrepancies arise. This seemed to me to be an inadequate response, though I don't doubt it's behind the reluctance of most states to enter into common pacts.
If indeed Georgia, Nebraska and Maine are teaching division skills at different points in their educational sequence, then one of two things should be true:
1) After rigorous scientific study, it should be clear that there is a "best practice" sequence which maximizes student's developmental track and imparts the skills most efficiently and effectively. There is no reason for any state to be using an inferior sequence simply in the name of local control.
2) We can get away from the antiquated notion that all children learn at the same rate and develop assessments which are pegged to skills instead of age. That is to say, assess all the students in Georgia, Nebraska and Maine who are being taught division, regardless of whether division is taught in 2nd grade or 3rd grade. It's the skill proficiency, not the grade, which is the issue around which accountability and assessment must revolve.
States obviously like having control over their own assessment regimes, especially since so many of them are fond of inflating their scores to avoid looking bad. Yet we're not going to make much real progress while accountability is shrouded in misdirection; common assessments and ultimately voluntary national standards may present the best course out of that fog. The states seem to be searching for reasons for reticence, but their arguments fall flat.
Hunt suggested that it wasn't so much the content that was an issue (after all, as Thomas Toch pointed out, Georgia and Nebraska and Maine are all hopefully teaching the same reading and math skills), but rather the sequence. Since states teach various content at different times in the cirricula and sometimes in different grades, discrepancies arise. This seemed to me to be an inadequate response, though I don't doubt it's behind the reluctance of most states to enter into common pacts.
If indeed Georgia, Nebraska and Maine are teaching division skills at different points in their educational sequence, then one of two things should be true:
1) After rigorous scientific study, it should be clear that there is a "best practice" sequence which maximizes student's developmental track and imparts the skills most efficiently and effectively. There is no reason for any state to be using an inferior sequence simply in the name of local control.
2) We can get away from the antiquated notion that all children learn at the same rate and develop assessments which are pegged to skills instead of age. That is to say, assess all the students in Georgia, Nebraska and Maine who are being taught division, regardless of whether division is taught in 2nd grade or 3rd grade. It's the skill proficiency, not the grade, which is the issue around which accountability and assessment must revolve.
States obviously like having control over their own assessment regimes, especially since so many of them are fond of inflating their scores to avoid looking bad. Yet we're not going to make much real progress while accountability is shrouded in misdirection; common assessments and ultimately voluntary national standards may present the best course out of that fog. The states seem to be searching for reasons for reticence, but their arguments fall flat.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, February 02, 2006 at 1:32 PM.
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