Consortia assessments – yours, mine or ours?

As states moved to implement new, more rigorous college/career-readiness standards in English/language arts and mathematics, they faced a challenge:  how would they assess student progress on the new standards?  Writing high quality assessment items that truly measure student mastery of the standards would be no small task.  It would be both time consuming and expensive.

In Kentucky, due to the mandates of Senate Bill 1 (2009) to implement new standards and aligned assessments in 2011-12, the Kentucky Department of Education contracted with vendors to provide end-of-the year tests for students in grades 3-8, and an on-demand writing test and end-of-course exams in Algebra II, English II, Biology and U.S. History at the high school level.  The majority of the tests were traditional, multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests that were really more narrowly focused than the standards demanded, but were nonetheless valid and reliable. 

Meanwhile, in 2010 through the Race to the Top Assessment Program, the U.S. Department of Education (USED) awarded $330 million to two assessment consortia to develop a new generation of tests designed to provide ongoing feedback to teachers during the course of the school year, measure annual student growth, and more accurately gauge students’ understanding and application of the standards. Through the consortia, states would benefit from having their dollars used in highly leveraged ways to support goals that would not otherwise be achieved without an infusion of federal funding.

Based on their applications, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) planned to test students' ability to read complex text, complete research projects, excel at classroom speaking and listening assignments, and work with digital media. 

The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) would test students using computer adaptive technology that would ask students tailored questions based on their previous answers. 

The consortia would develop periodic assessments throughout the school year to inform students, parents and teachers about whether students were on track.

The requirements of the grant provided that  the consortia “…make all assessment content (i.e., assessments and assessment items) developed with funds from this competition freely available to the States, technology platform provides and other that request it for the purposes of administering assessments, provided they comply with the consortium or state requirements for test and item security.”

This provision was designed to ensure that content developed with public funds was widely available – including to states that were not part of grantee consortia. Initially, Kentucky was a participating state in each consortium, meaning we were monitoring but not leading the work. Eventually, due to capacity issues and a potential conflict of interest if either or both of the consortia would bid on Kentucky’s testing contract, the state withdrew from each.

Now, in an effort to save millions of dollars, the Kentucky Department of Education is seeking access to consortia-developed assessment items at the end of the 2014-15 school year so that we may enhance Kentucky's assessment item pool for the 2015-16 state assessments. Of course, before any new items are added to state K-PREP tests, they would move through the normal state review process.

It is my understanding, however, that several states have already contacted the consortia to request access to assessment items and have been denied access or told they would have to pay for access to assessment items. Both of these conditions seem to violate the program requirements of the publicly funded grant.  

So, the question is, who owns the assessment items and the consortia-developed assessments?  Are they yours (the consortia’s), mine (the states’) or ours (the federal government’s)?

I have written Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to ask for clarification. Kentucky and several other states anxiously await his response. Stay tuned.

Easy standards and tests don’t help students reach college/career-readiness

Last week, I attended the annual Policy Forum of the Council of Chief State School Officers.  Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee delivered a wonderful speech about the importance of the arts in a balanced education.

Also, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan participated in a question and answer session with chiefs from more than 30 states. Secretary Duncan, in response to a question about the rising tide of criticism about the Common Core State Standards, said he was surprised that “soccer moms” from affluent schools were pushing back on tests over the new standards because the results showed their students may not be performing at the levels they had been used to. This comment seemed very reasonable and factual in context, however, immediately the social media universe exploded with the “soccer mom” comment. From my point of view, the real issue runs much deeper.

For years, SAT and ACT data have told us that many students who graduate from high school are not ready for college-level work or to enter a career. “Not ready” means that students who graduate from high school have to take remediation classes in college -- classes that cost parents and students a lot of money and for which students do not receive credit. Students who graduate from high school college/career-ready are more successful in college/career. They have a significantly higher GPAs their freshman year in college, complete more credit hours and are more likely to return for a second year than those students who are not college/career-ready.

The Kentucky General Assembly recognized all of these issues when it passed Senate Bill 1 in 2009 and required higher education and K-12 education to work together to increase the percentage of high school graduates who are college-ready by 50 percent by 2015. When we started measuring in 2010, the percentage of high school graduates who achieved college/career-ready status was 34 percent. The Class of 2013 had improved to 54 percent. We are well on our way to reaching the goal of 67 percent by 2015.

The work to help students reach college/career-readiness begins with early childhood programs and continues through the K-12 experience. Students cannot wait until high school to start working toward reaching college/career-ready standards. With that understanding, Kentucky and other states changed state testing to be more aligned with the results from SAT and ACT. Kentucky aligned tests in grades 3-8 so that parents will know every year whether their child was on target to reach college- and career-readiness.

What Secretary Duncan was addressing was the pushback in New York from parents who did not like hearing their elementary and middle grade students were not achieving at the highest levels. Parents were upset that in previous years, their child had been “exceptional” on state tests but under the new state tests, their child may be at the “needs improvement” level. I believe many parents do not understand the simple message that we’ve intentionally raised the bar on state tests and from the 3rd grade, the results provide a clear indication of student progress toward college/career-readiness. We know these new tests are good predictors of the percentage of students who will graduate from high school college/career-ready because the tests are aligned to the SAT and ACT results that we have seen for many years.

My concern is that much of the national debate is focusing on the politics of common core, rather than helping children reach higher expectations. I believe that every parent wants their child to succeed and reach college/career-readiness. Our challenge as educators is to communicate in ways that parents can understand and fully support parents in helping their child reach this goal.

While Secretary Duncan’s remarks may have been taken out of context, I know that his intention is to help more students reach college/career-readiness so the students will be competitive in the global job market and our national economy will remain the top economy in the world.