More on Assessment

Here is another assessment item - this time concerning general assessment.

This slide presentation was intended as an assessment primer to begin a conversation on best practices for assessment.

*Note that all the original "bells and whistles" placed in the slide presentation do not transfer to this embedded format.

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Standards vs. Standardized Testing: Comparing Apples to Oranges

For the last six months or so, most of my education thoughts have circled around assessment but not standardized testing. So in a continuing effort to educate myself I read the first chapter of a book by Linda McNeil entitled Contradictions of School Reform: the High Cost of Standardized Testing published in 2000. The chapter’s title, “Standardization, defensive teaching, and the problems of control” reflects a critical discussion of the inequities caused by standardization in education.

As a companion reading I chose “Academic Improvement through Regular Assessment” by Patrick J. Wolf for the Peabody Journal of Education (2007). Wolf argues that although there are complaints of “too much testing” in schools, more frequent and regular testing is needed to support academic improvement. Since standardized testing, academic standards, NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) have become divisive and controversial subjects, these two readings seemed like an interesting starting point.

Right away McNeil points out a fundamental problem, one of terminology. The terms “standards”, “standardization”, “standards-based assessment”, and “standardized tests” are being used interchangeably and the result is confusing.

Standards vs. Standardization

When I became a new teacher about ten years ago, the term standard was often used interchangeably with the term expectation. “We have high standards for our students.” In this case it was used to describe a level of quality for work, outcomes, and behavior.

Toward the end of my teacher training as a secondary science and math teacher, I learned that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) had recently published a set of “science standards” to guide curriculum. These were basically suggested minimum learning goals in science for each grade level. Suggestions and examples of instructional methods and possible assessments were sometimes included or published in companion documents.

Now when we refer to “standards” in the classroom, we are referring to the Indiana Academic Standards which are published on the Indiana DOE website for all grade levels and core academic subjects. These are also minimum learning goals. The website also includes some resources for suggested instruction and assessment. Hundreds of teachers from all areas of the state had input in writing these goals and resources. So when teachers create a lesson plan, they often required by their district or principal to cite the Indiana Academic Standards which directly relate to the lesson.

In related contrast, the term “standardization” is more general. It is used in all areas of business and culture to mean consistency or sameness. In her book, McNeil argues that “high standards and issues of quality” have become confused with standardization. Her primary example is the state of Texas which became a leader in school reform in the 1980s and early 1990s. In an effort to improve educational quality to hold “schools and school personnel more accountable for their professional practice”, the state government “enacted a set of standardized controls to monitor children’s learning and teacher’s classroom behavior. …The activities they mandated were to be uniform…” The plan to improve quality was to mandate sameness not just in curriculum but instruction and assessment as well. This is the ultimate factory model of education. But because each student brings personal learning variables, it does make sense that sameness in instruction would result in a higher quality of learning. No wonder people are confused.

So we could say that in Indiana we have “standardized our curriculum by legislating that all students in the state of Indiana accomplish or show progress toward the academic goals described by the written standards”. So the sameness is conveyed through the aim that all Indiana students meet these minimum learning goals. The quality pertains first to the quality of the written standard itself (which can be changed or revised) and second to the degree the standard is met, exceeded, or failed. This leads us directly to a discussion of assessment.

Standards-Based Assessment vs. Standardized Tests

To decide if a standard is met, exceeded, or failed, we must figure out a way to measure it. Standards-based assessment simply means that the test items directly refer to the standards learned by the students. Once again this refers to the quality of the assessment. The format of the assessment is not dictated. ISTEP is an example of one form of standards-based testing. This becomes confusing because ISTEP is also a standardized test. It is standardized because it is mandated that all Indiana students (grades 3-10) take the same test at the same time. The sameness of the standardized test insures some comparative data for analysis. However, the sameness of the standardized test does not insure a high level of quality.

These are crucial distinctions to make especially when Wolf in his article defines the two purposes for assessment: diagnostics and accountability. It makes perfect sense.

Teachers and students need diagnostics. These formative assessments should be timely, frequent and relevant (Darling-Hammond, L., 2008) (Schneider, J. 2007). Standards-based assessments are by definition relevant. Thus ISTEP can be used as a diagnostic but it is not considered timely since the results are returned several months later. It is also not frequent since it is only given once per year. So ISTEP could be considered a “limited” diagnostic. Because it is standardized for the state, there is plenty of data to analize for gaps and trends to gauge the big picture.

Since the diagnostic side of assessment is relatively easy to define, the issue of accountability becomes the controversial double-edged sword currently leading the charge for school reform. The current favored evidence for teacher and school accountability are the results of yearly state standardized tests. In science class, you learn early on that you cannot make a conclusion based on one or two measurements. You must have multiple trials, with multiple measurements to analyze and come to a conclusion. So because standardized tests such as ISTEP are a “limited diagnostic” it does not make sense that those once a year results should be the only evidence considered for accountability. So really there aught to be more measurements, more assessments, not less.

“As one principal of an inner-city school once commented at a public forum on No Child Left Behind, ‘Without regular testing teaching is like flying blind’ (World Bank, 2002).” (Wolf, 2007) Why are educators so afraid of assessments? Life is full of tests. Testing is not something we can or should hide from. It is something we should acknowledge as an important part of our life and learn to manage and not fear. (Wolf, 2007)
The educational system, using standards and standards-based assessments, makes logical sense. The controversial issues come to the surface because of the power or control of the source material for the standards, the assessments, and the accountability practices. In the case of Texas, “These controls arose outside the educational system, derived from pressures from the business establishment to fund only those educational expenses that contributed to measurable outcomes.” (McNeil, 2000)

Academic standards and assessments will only be as good as the source materials and the authors who write them. Measurements to determine accountability will only be as good as the measuring instrument. As always, with problems in education, it comes down to the actual implementation. If schools and the world of education had come up with a sound and defendable approach to measuring accountability on their own, then there wouldn’t have been a need for legislation to force the issue.

Resources

Darling-Hammond, L (2008). Powerful Learning - What We Know About Teaching for Understanding. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Indiana's Academic Standards and Resources. Retrieved February 12, 2009, from Indiana Department of Education Web site: http://www.indianastandardsresources.org/index.asp

McNeil, L. M. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. Critical social thought. New York: Routledge.

Schneider, J. (2007). Chalkbored: What's wrong with school and how to fix it. [S.l.]: Pace of Mind.

Shulman, L. S. (2007).Counting and recounting: Assessment and the quest for accountability. The Magazine of Higher Learning. 39, 20-25.

Wolf, P.J. (2007). Academic improvement through regular assessment. Peabody Journal of Education. 82, 690-702.

World Bank. (2002, October). No Child Left Behind: Implications for Washington, DC – A roundtable discussion with Mayor Anthony Williams. Videotape. Washington, DC: The World Bank