California can be national leader in reforming testing and school accountability
This represents a pivotal moment in the rollout of the comprehensive revision of how California tests its students and how it will holds public schools accountable.
About every dimension of its testing and accountability system is in move. The transition is being driven by several landmark reforms, including the Mutual Cadre Land Standards, dramatic changes in California's school finance arrangement, a new statewide assessment system to supercede the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) plan, and reforms of the Academic Performance Alphabetize (API), the main measure of schoolhouse performance.
As State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson stated over a twelvemonth ago, "We must fix our sights on a new, more ambitious goal – creating a organisation that fosters high quality education and learning in every classroom."
Getting there will not be a straightforward job. 1 challenge is the sheer scale on which all of this must be done – California has nearly 1,000 local educational activity authorities, ten,000 schools and more than six million public school students.
Another challenge is how to balance the development of a uniform testing and accountability system against the diversity of the state'due south schools, geography and population.
Nevertheless another is that the legislation driving the reforms has gone into upshot at unlike times, mandating changes to unlike aspects of the assessment and accountability continuum, and creating some confusion as to how all the pieces of reform mesh with 1 another.
In social club to ensure that the system that is eventually in place is effective, a new EdSource report identifies 8 essential principles that volition aid ensure the state achieves its goal by moving the current testing and accountability system in the following directions:
- From a organisation with an excessive focus on answering multiple choice questions to one that incorporates multiple measures and that assesses "deeper learning" skills that are needed for students to succeed in college or careers;
- From a system based solely on top-downwards accountability imposed by Sacramento and Washington to one that incorporates assessments administered at a classroom, schoolhouse or district level;
- From a organization that depends on tests whose results are issued once a year, and typically have no touch on how private students are taught, to ones that provide more immediate feedback in ways that help children learn and teachers teach more finer;
- From a system based mainly on external rewards and punishments to i that incorporates intrinsic incentives that motivate change amid private students, teachers and schools;
- From a system that is focused mainly on getting children to perform at a "good" level to one that measures growth from yr to year, motivates all children to practise better, and encourages both students and schools to make progress at whatever level they are currently succeeding;
- From a organization that focuses unduly on math and English language arts, often at the expense of other aspects of the schoolhouse curriculum, to a more balanced one that incorporates other key subject areas, especially science;
- From an overly circuitous arrangement that is difficult for ordinary Californians to understand to one that is more transparent and offers a multidimensional portrait of how students and schools are doing in clearer terms and language;
- From a organization that uses technology mainly to report results to schools and the public to ane that uses technology to provide more firsthand feedback to teachers and students and
to track students' growth and progress through the twelfth form and into college and the workplace.
All this places the burden of responsibleness on state education leaders to ensure the moving parts are coordinated with one some other and to clarify the timeline for implementation. To ensure success, there needs to be clear oversight of the process and a way to manage the competing interests and complexities that are at play.
After more than a decade of implementing top-downwardly assessments that have failed to evangelize on their promises, California now has the opportunity to take the lead in the nation in coming up with a arrangement that not but fairly and accurately measures student and school operation, only also helps contribute more than directly to better teaching and learning.
See EdSource's new study, Reforming Testing and Accountability: Essential Principles for Student Success in California, as well every bit a an assessment and accountability timeline compiled by EdSource.
To get more reports similar this 1, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily electronic mail on latest developments in education.
Source: https://edsource.org/2014/california-can-be-national-leader-in-reforming-testing-and-school-accountability/59486
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