Think back to your days as a high school student. Did you take the SAT or ACT test? Did you take other standardized tests, maybe an end-of-course exam or graduation test? Was it more important to know how well you understood the material you learned in your current classes or to know how ready you were for college? Are those the same things?
State leaders should ask these same questions as they prepare for a new era of high school accountability and testing under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—and decide what’s most fair for schools to be accountable for.
To help them, the High-Quality Assessment Project, supported by Education First, has released “Choices and Trade-offs: Key Questions for State Policymakers when Selecting High School Assessments.” Its author Erin O’Hara—a former state data and assessment leader—collected advice from state and national assessment and policy experts to elevate the most important issues state policymakers should consider when choosing high school assessments.
Should states consider different high school assessment options, and what are the trade-offs?
Federal law continues to expect states to test all students in math, English language arts and science at least once in grades 9-12. But ESSA lays out a path for states (or districts) to assess high school students on a state-approved “nationally-recognized state assessment” in place of a state-designed test.
All assessments are designed with a specific purpose in mind. Assessment experts caution that assessments designed for one particular purpose may not be valid for another purpose. In high school, assessments are typically designed either to predict students’ likelihood of success in college—like ACT and SAT—or to assess their knowledge and skills they’ve learned while in high school—like PARCC, Smarter Balanced and other high-quality state summative tests. Most experts believe all four of these tests—even though they measure different things and were designed for different purposes—meet ESSA’s definition for a nationally-developed assessment. But that’s not the same as deciding which tests will best meet your state’s goals.
Back to your high school experience. You probably weren’t faced with a schedule of testing options like some of today’s students, including ACT/SAT and their “pre” exams, final course exams, state summative tests for student graduation or school accountability, AP, IB, CTE and workforce readiness tests—and if you were, you probably didn’t count testing as the most important part of your education. It’s not fair to make high school students take test after test simply to fit the requirements of state accountability systems, colleges and universities, and other stakeholders. At the same time, state leaders should ensure their menu of assessments provides a clear value for its students, schools and districts.
So, what is fair for students and where is the most value for states? Before state policymakers rush into a decision to cut or replace different high school tests, we advise them to consider these thorny, complicated but really important issues:
There are important trade-offs to different test options. As state policymakers review Erin’s new guide, they should do so with one overarching question in mind: How will any changes in our assessment policies affect all students in our state?
For more information or to find out how Education First can help your state or organization address these issues, contact Bill Porter, Partner at Education First.
