the lead. We should offer waivers to
schools and educators participating in
these initiatives to use new summative
and formative assessment practices. We
also need a plan to evaluate and scale
these assessments up along the way,
starting with small pilots in a few
schools, with incentives to build
demand so that successful ideas reach
more students in more districts and
become worthy alternatives to current
high-stakes testing.
New technologies offer us the opportunity to plot a course that maintains
accountability goals but encourages
significant innovation and prioritizes the
use of technology-enabled assessments—not just for automation, but for
substantive improvements in student
achievement.
Author’s note: This article is based on
Education Sector’s 2009 report Beyond the
Bubble: Technology and the Future of Student
Assessment, available at www.educationsector
.org/usr_doc/Beyond_the_Bubble.pdf.
References
Bausell, C. V. (2008, March 27). Tracking
U.S. trends. Education Week.
Bennett, R. E., & Gitomer, D. H. (in press).
Transforming K– 12 assessment. In C.
Wyatt-Smith & J. Cumming (Eds.),
Assessment issues of the 21st century. New York:
Springer.
Cuban, L. (1996, October 9). Techno-reformers and classroom teachers.
Education Week.
Koretz, D., McCaffrey, D. F., Klein, S. P., Bell,
R. M., & Stecher, B. M. (1992). The reliability of scores from the 1992 Vermont Portfolio Assessment Program. Santa Monica,
CA: RAND Corporation.
Mislevy, R. J., Steinberg, L. S., Almond, R. G.,
Haertel, G. D., & Penuel, W. R. (2000).
Leverage points for improving educational
assessment (CSE Technical Report). Los
Angeles: University of California Graduate
School of Education and Information
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