Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a statement responding to widespread concerns about standardized testing—saying that “testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools” and offering to delay by a year the federal requirement that teacher evaluations include some “significant” influence from students’ performance on state assessments.
This coming school year, a majority of states will implement the Common Core State Standards and corresponding assessments from either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. To prepare for the new assessments, both consortia field-tested thousands of test items this spring. AACTE asked each consortium to provide our members with an update on its progress. This post addresses Smarter Balanced; find the PARCC update here. The views in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
As K-12 schools across the country work on implementing the Common Core State Standards, a major body of work has been preparation of new assessments built to assess student mastery of the standards. In June, the 22-state Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium marked a significant milestone as its field test came to a close. The scale and scope of this “practice run” of new assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards was truly unprecedented; 4.2 million students participated, making this field test the largest online assessment in the nation’s history.
This coming school year, a majority of states will implement the Common Core State Standards and corresponding assessments from either the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. To prepare for the new assessments, both consortia field-tested thousands of test items this spring. AACTE asked each consortium to provide our members with an update on its progress. This post addresses PARCC; find the Smarter Balanced update here. The views in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
In June, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—which includes 14 states and the District of Columbia—accomplished a major milestone: the completion of a field test of new, Common Core-aligned assessments that were developed for the states by the states. Almost 4 years in the making, these K-12 assessment systems came online this spring as states started to “test the test” to ensure that assumptions made about content alignment, use of technology, and ease of use for both students and teachers alike were on target.
On July 22, New York Commissioner of Education John King convened a task force to advise the state on its future use of edTPA, a performance assessment system for aspiring teachers that is now required for licensure in New York.
As the first state to fully implement policy requiring new teachers to pass edTPA for licensure, New York and its PK-12 educators and teacher educators have encountered a variety of operational challenges. Every state that follows New York, as well as our larger professional community, will benefit from New York’s initiative, experience, and solutions.
Consequential use of edTPA is just one of four assessment innovations rolled out in New York’s ambitious new licensing process. (Other required licensure assessments are the Educating All Students exam, Academic Literacy Skills test, and certificate-specific Content Specialty Tests.) While some of us have expressed concern about the rapid roll-out schedule, it is apparent that many candidates were indeed ready to meet the rigorous new requirements: The initial edTPA pass rate was 84%, which we find impressive and encouraging.
The National edTPA Implementation Conference organized by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) and AACTE will be held October 24–25 at the University of California, Los Angeles. This annual 2-day gathering is open to higher education administrators, faculty, supervisors, and state education agency personnel who are seeking to deepen their understanding of edTPA and network within a learning community of edTPA users.
What is the difference between assessment literacy and data literacy?
On Monday, July 21, at 12:30 EDT, you can learn the answer to this question in a free webinar hosted by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC). AACTE is a partner of DQC.
DQC’s Brennan McMahon Parton will moderate a discussion between two national experts on data literacy and assessment literacy: Research Scientist Ellen Mandinach of WestEd and Founding Principal Stuart Kahl of Measured Progress. Mandinach and Kahl will define data literacy and assessment literacy and discuss the ways they do—and don’t—overlap. DQC’s inaugural teacher fellow, Raquel Maya Carson, will respond from the perspective of a real classroom teacher on data and assessment use.
Once upon a time, we were challenged to find useful data about education. Not much information was collected, and it was largely inaccessible. In recent years, as public demands for greater transparency and evidence-based accountability have generated an information frenzy, we still face this challenge—but not because data are scant. Now they are overabundant, often difficult to decipher, or of unreliable quality. In this new environment, we must prepare teachers and other education leaders to be not only data literate, but also advocates for effective data use by others.
AACTE has partnered with Measured Progress to provide a series of three webinars on a new requirement in the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation standards: facilitating and measuring candidates’ assessment literacy. This webinar series, “Developing the Assessment Literacy of Teacher Candidates,” is free and open to the public.
AACTE President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson announced Friday that Mark LaCelle-Peterson, senior vice president of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), will join AACTE’s staff as vice president for policy and programs July 1.
“We are delighted to welcome Mark to AACTE,” Robinson said. “He knows the work of our membership very well, and we are eager to bring his expertise to the Association’s programs.”
LaCelle-Peterson will provide strategic and operational leadership for AACTE’s Policy and Programs Department. The position is a member of the senior management team that is instrumental in developing and executing the overall strategic goals of the Association. Managing a team consisting of staff and consultants, LaCelle-Peterson will provide program and policy leadership and will develop high-level activities to showcase and support the work of the Association.
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of an exciting new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Designing for Deeper Learning: How to Develop Performance Assessments for the Common Core.
This 9-week course will build educators’ capacity to develop and use curriculum-embedded performance assessments that fit local contexts. Course activities will guide students through the development and implementation of a performance task that is aligned with a specific curricular unit and performance outcomes integral to the Common Core State Standards. The course will use a learning-centered approach in which assessments are not only of learning, but also for learning.
edTPA has been nationally available for nearly a year, and some 520 educator preparation programs in 34 states are already using it. Unfortunately, there are many misunderstandings and misperceptions about this assessment that threaten to compromise its utility. In response, the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) and AACTE have created a new Myths and Facts document to promote accurate and informed conversations on edTPA.
This clarifying document is publicly available and gives faculty, policy makers, PK-12 educators, and others a fuller understanding of edTPA and why support for performance assessment of beginning teachers continues to grow. The educators who have collaborated to develop, use, and share edTPA encourage thoughtful discussion about how edTPA is being implemented to support teacher candidates and preparation programs.
Visit edtpa.aacte.org to learn more about edTPA.
AACTE is pleased to announce that three new topical action groups (TAGs) have been established and are accepting new members:
The Research in Teacher Preparation TAG is dedicated to identifying current research gaps in teacher preparation literature to guide collaborative research projects among TAG members.
The Assessment of and for Student Learning TAG is dedicated to determining which national and local assessment standards and tools are most valuable to establish “core assessment principals” and developing a paradigm of PK-12 student performance assessment that is appropriate for the 21st century.
The Innovations Inventory of AACTE’s Innovation Exchange is an online database highlighting members’ pioneering practices in educator preparation that have shown a positive impact on issues of student learning, preparation program advancement, or educator workforce needs. This blog post is one in a series highlighting entries from the inventory. To request inclusion of your institution’s innovations, contact Jessica Milton at jmilton@aacte.org.
The Bradley Professional Development Schools (PDS) Partnership was established in 1995 to address the needs of the eight PDS sites affiliated with Bradley University (IL). Inspired by a full-service community schools model, the partnership extends beyond teacher education to include all five departments in Bradley’s College of Education and Health Sciences.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true: After 38 years, Mary Diez is leaving Alverno July 1.
Diez, professor and former dean of the School of Education at Alverno College (WI), was elected last month to a 4-year term as president of the School Sisters of St. Francis (SSSF), an international congregation with 850 sisters in the United States, Europe, India, and Latin America. This full-time commitment will take her to all of those places, although she plans to retain her campus residence at the college where she has lived for nearly 4 decades.
Taking her leadership skills off campus is hardly new for Diez, whether as a consultant in the Milwaukee community, member of standards boards, convener of assessment institutes, champion of dispositions work, or president of AACTE—among countless other roles she has held around the country and internationally. Despite having so much on her plate, Diez generously responded to my questions this week about her career to date and future plans.
Last week, the Northwest Evaluation Association, in cooperation with Grunwald Associates, released a new report, Make Assessment Matter. The report follows up on a study done by the group 2 years ago of assessment perceptions held by parents, teachers, and district administrators.
In the current landscape where standards, accountability assessments, and use of student value-added measures to evaluate teachers prevail, the researchers expanded survey respondents to include students to better understand their awareness and what value—if any—they perceive in educational testing.
Based on survey data collected from more than 1,000 students in grades 4-12, more than 1,000 PK-12 classroom teachers, and 200 district administrators, the report highlights six key findings:
