WASHINGTON, D.C. – Testing in America’s K-12 schools is expected to change radically in the 2014-2015 school year under a new set of education standards adopted by most states, but challenges associated with implementing the still-undeveloped tests make the anticipated changes a tenuous prospect.
That was one of the key points from “Education’s Next Big Test,” a Washington Monthly-led discussion hosted Tuesday at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.
“A lot can happen between now and spring of 2015,” said Laura McGiffert Slover, Senior Vice President at the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, one of two federally-funded consortia of states charged with designing assessments for the Common Core State Standards adopted by a number of states in 2009.
Slover reported that PARCC is “on track and where we need to be in our timelines,” but she also said that important aspects of the assessments have yet to be worked out, such as the development and field-testing of assessment items and setting cut scores for proficiency.
The higher education community is being engaged in the development of the tests, Slover said, but political will must be garnered to make the Common Core assessment effort a success. And important questions remain about the ability of states to harness technology to administer the tests online so that feedback becomes nearly instantaneous, as well as how states will pay for the new tests in a fiscally constrained environment, Slover and other panelists said.
Tuesday’s discussion was meant to highlight a new special report produced by Washington Monthly with support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Beyond Slover, the panelists featured three education writers/policy experts who wrote articles for the special report. They are: Bill Tucker, Deputy Director for Policy Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Susan Headden, Senior Writer at the Education Sector; and Bob Rothman, Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
