It’s that time of year again – the time of year when we consider and debate the value and importance of statewide testing for our students in grades three through eight. Each year, before these exams are administered, the New York State Education Department provides the public with information as to why these tests are crucial. In opposition to this, families who do not wish for their children to sit for these exams notify school administrators of their intentions to “opt out.” As superintendent, I interpret all of these signals through the lens of “doing what is good for kids” and re-emphasize why student assessment can be a contributing factor towards successful learning and teaching. Assessment can (and should) provide the benefits of feedback to teachers for improved classroom practice and increased learning for students.
From the perspective of improving classroom practices, our instructional staff in the South Orangetown Central School District use student test data from the Grades 3-8 New York State Assessments to guide “what is taught” and how the content is delivered (these results are one component of several sources of student data). This feedback guides the work that our teachers do regarding professional development and curriculum design. According to the educational researcher John Hattie, “teachers too often see assessment feedback as making statements about students and not about their teaching, and hence the benefits of feedback from such testing are often diluted (Hattie, 2012).” However, this is not the case in SOCSD since our teachers use student test data to provide valuable feedback towards improving classroom practices.
We also strive for students to develop mastery-level learning in the classroom. For this to occur, students must take ownership of their own learning and must challenge themselves to learn more. Here is where state assessments, as a feedback mechanism, are not likely to contribute to mastery learning. Effective feedback should allow students to answer the following questions (Hattie, 2012):
- Where am I going? What are my goals?
- How am I going? What progress is made towards the goal?
- Where to next? What activities need to be undertaken next to make better progress?
The current New York State 3-8 testing program is not designed to directly support the claim that “the primary function of assessment is to support learning by generating feedback that students can act upon in terms of where they are going, how they are going there, and where they might go next (Hattie, 2012).” Fortunately, in the South Orangetown Central School District, we have a variety of other means to provide this feedback in “real time” to students that promote mastery-level learning (a.k.a. Rapid Formative Assessment). However, the statewide 3-8 testing program is just not there yet, despite improvements in recent years. These improvements were remedies for test-construction flaws that existed in earlier versions of the tests (duration of exams, number of questions, types of questions, etc.).
Assessment as a feedback mechanism can be a powerful moderator of learning when done correctly. Therefore, the question that we should be asking is whether these statewide exams can adequately provide feedback to teachers so that they may modify their instruction for the benefit of student learning. The answer to this question is a qualified “yes” provided that efforts are made to use the resultant data in ways that best serve our students. Beyond this, I am still hopeful that the New York State Education Department will improve the Grades 3-8 New York State Assessments to provide feedback that moves learners forward and activates students as agents of their own learning. It appears that we have made some progress, but there is clearly room for improvement.