reliability and validity of standardized tests

With a learner profile and curriculum requirements, IB represents a comprehensive outcome framework but is short of a schoolwide model with strong systems and supports. International Baccalaureate is an example of a diploma option available to motivated students. Schools share a learning model, a platform and teacher supports. They help schools adopt a comprehensive outcome framework and assess student and school progress. Given the interest in broader aims, networks of schools that share outcome frameworks hold real promise.ĭiploma networks are affiliations of schools that share goals, systems and supports. This approach would work adequately for reading, writing and math (to be fully enacted, it would require an update of the federal policy but that seems doable). After an initial exemption period, states could sample student profiles to periodically check the accuracy of local systems. If yes, the system would be granted a three-year testing exemption.ģ.

A comparability analysis would determine if the system can reliably and accurately report student progress (both achievement levels and growth rates). (To promote security, these profiles could be anonymized.)Ģ. Districts and networks would petition for an assessment exemption by submitting a cohort of learner profiles. That would involve a three-step process:ġ. To curtail or end standardized testing, states could verify that good systems have more than adequate student performance data. In partnership with NWEA, Louisiana will shorten their end of year test by measuring what students have learned via passages from books that students have read and assessing students through several brief assessments throughout the year. States are beginning to take advantage of cumulative validity.

(Adaptive assessments can automatically adjust difficulty and short cut the process but they still don’t take advantage of what is know about a learner trajectory.)

With that much information, you have a pretty good idea of what they know and you don’t need to start from scratch with 50 new questions-but that’s what exactly what standardized tests do. Īn example of cumulative validity is 500 data points from six sources collected over eight months about a middle-grade student’s progress on ratios and proportions. All of these new forms of feedback don’t integrate very well (because we still have an interoperability problem) but they set the stage for what David Conely calls cumulative validity. With the shift to digital learning, many students have experienced a big increase in formative feedback from adaptive assessments, embedded quizzes, and online resources like Khan Academy. One problem with state-mandated tests is that they don’t take advantage of everything teachers know about their students.

Reliability and validity of standardized tests