A group of 15 civil rights, business and education advocacy organizations wrote a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona today, asking details about the administration’s plans for resuming state assessment and school improvement requirements set by federal law which were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organizations expressed concerns about losing essential education data provided by the assessments preventing the thorough understanding of students’ needs. The letter says failing to address the problem “may result in a return to the days when inequitable outcomes for students of color, English learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income backgrounds were easily swept under the rug.”
The organizations recognize the opportunity to learn from experiences of the pandemic which may improve assessment policies and designs and specifically ask the administration to ensure high-quality assessments in the upcoming academic year to identify institutions in need of support. The ultimate objective is to address the difficulties of assessment policy and practice and to improve the system in a way that meets the needs of educators, students, parents and policymakers alike.
“Our students, educators, and families deserve a thoughtful conversation about assessment policy and practice, and how we can surface better, more useful testing tools across our education system,” the organizations wrote. “Both proponents and opponents of our current testing system want educational assessments that can better guide decision-making and better inform classroom instruction and student progress.”
The organizations believe that the dialogue should involve all parties of education with special attention to those of racially, ethnically, and politically diverse background. Additionally, the organizations pointed out the following principles as guidance to any conversation about the future of assessments:
- Statewide, summative assessments will continue to be a part of our education system; we will not consider eliminating such testing altogether but focus on improvement for the benefit of all stakeholders.
- Assessment systems should be predictive, informative, and evaluative, recognizing that no single assessment can serve all these purposes.
- Assessments must provide aligned, comparable, statewide data for all students; we will not allow innovation to hide the performance of certain student groups and populations.
- Assessment data should be a tool for improvement, not penalty; we will work to ensure that future assessments are useful at the school, district and state levels.
- Assessment systems should provide meaningful, actionable information and should be accessible and unbiased.
- Assessment administration and all individual results should be safe, secure, and private.
- The advancement of assessment design should be to the benefit of all students, but in particular with a goal of advancing racial equity and the educational achievement for underserved students, including English learners and students with disabilities.
The letter can be viewed in its entirety at www.forstudentsuccess.org/future-of-assessment.
