How K-12 leaders can make the most of mandated assessments without overwhelming educators and students
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Most states now require K-12 schools to administer assessments beyond federally mandated standardized tests. For example, more than 40 states mandate dyslexia screening. According to a recent survey, at least half of K-12 educators administer formative, benchmark and progress-monitoring assessments.
While these assessments provide valuable information back to teachers, caregivers, and students, they do take time to prepare for, administer, and then interpret the results. In the survey, educators identify the time commitment as their biggest challenge with assessments.
Fortunately, K-12 leaders can help. Here’s how.
The power of training
The K-12 leaders and educators surveyed say their districts or schools have prioritized teacher training to improve assessments. This is a smart decision, according to Amy Reilly, Pearson’s Vice President of Assessment Product. “Assessments vary based on their purpose,” Reilly says, “and often teachers end up using the results in ways they weren’t designed for because they were not provided with training on the specific uses of the assessment.”
This confusion is understandable, especially as teachers are required to give more assessments. It’s up to school leaders to provide the training that teachers need to understand each assessment’s intended uses and how to interpret the results to guide instruction.
AI can help — to an extent
Most educators are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) for support. Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents say they already use AI with assessments or plan to do so soon.
More than four out of five see value in using AI in the following areas:
- Generating assessment questions.
- Scoring assessments.
- Reducing teacher time studying assessment data.
- Making lesson-planning suggestions based on assessment results.
- Assisting with personalized tutoring.
Among those already using AI, more than 94% report that AI proves very or somewhat effective in these realms.
If AI can relieve some of the teacher’s burden and better meet student needs, school leaders should take those wins…
…as long as they keep in mind AI’s limitations.
AI is a powerful tool but not a cure-all.
To guide instruction, assessments need to produce valid and reliable data down to a granular level. So questions must adhere to principled assessment design practice. They need to be built on a sound measurement model. They must be grade-level appropriate,free of biases and stereotypes, and reflect the rigor of the standards. And, the content of the test questions must be accurate, which is still a concern with using genAI tools.
That’s why Reilly advises, “Whether you’re using a generative AI tool to create assessment content yourself or using a vendor that has relied on AI, you need humans to review the content before it reaches students.”
Otherwise, you end up with garbage in, in terms of poor-quality content that students are responding to, garbage out with invalid or unreliable results
High-quality, comprehensive, and cohesive
K-12 educators express frustration with their assessment tools’ ineffectiveness. About two-thirds of survey respondents say it’s very important to be able to measure students’ progress toward specific learning targets, pinpoint student needs and measure critical thinking. However, far fewer than half strongly agree that they can do so with their assessments.
So, how can school leaders fill these gaps?
The first step is to review your current assessments. What tools do you offer teachers? Which ones do teachers actually use, and how do they use those tools? Do you have confidence in the results? Only by answering such questions can you ensure a high-quality assessment system that helps students.
You also need a comprehensive assessment system. Does your system accommodate all the various assessments you need to give students? Does your school or district require a common interim assessment but not provide guidance or resources for formative assessment? Does it differ by content area or grade band?
Finally, your assessment system should be cohesive. Too many educators deal with a problem that fifth-grade teacher Nora Boles spoke about in a recent Pearson webinar. “I have to pull [assessment] data afterward from so many different places,” Boles said. “It’s in bits and pieces.”
An integrated assessment system thus saves teachers time and aggravation. But more than that, it provides results that inform instruction. Teachers will struggle to synthesize data from assessments that don’t align with one another or even with their curriculum.
While teachers and students are concerned about the time that assessments take up, these recommendations will allow school leaders to make assessments not just more efficient but also more effective.
The Pearson Assessment for Learning Suite is a collection of measures and learning resources that makes it easy to assess your students’ academic, behavioral, and social wellness needs while making data-informed decisions to support them.