Education Week Issue 25 - Technology Counts 2014 - 28

Collaborating
On Testing

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26

While two major testing
consortia receive most
of the attention, there are
actually six different groups
developing tests aligned
to the common-core
standards.

Partnership for the Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers
/// 17 states, plus District of Columbia
Developing optional, diagnostic and mid-year
performance assessment for students. Online tests
for accountability purposes begin in spring of 2015.
Paper and pencil tests will be available, though parcc is
encouraging schools to make the transition to online.

Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium
/// 23 states
Offering optional, interim assessments for
schools to use over the course of the school
year. Summative tests for accountability
purposes begin in spring of 2015. Unlike parcc,
Smarter Balanced is using computer-adaptive
testing, meaning the questions students receive
vary, based on earlier answers. Paper-and-pencil
testing will be offered for the first three years of
operational testing, though the consortium
is encouraging schools to shift online.

National Center and State
Collaborative
/// 25 states
Developing assessments for students
with severe cognitive disabilities. The
comprehensive system includes formative
assessment tools for teachers as part of
curriculum guides, instructional units, and
other resources for educators. The ncsc online
summative assessments will include multiplechoice and constructed-response questions,
with the first operational administration
conducted in spring of 2015. They will be "stage
adaptive" tests, with groups of items that will
vary, depending on student performance.

Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate
Assessment Consortium
/// 18 states
Developing assessments for students with significant
cognitive disabilities. The consortium is arranging to
give students adaptive, instructionally embedded
assessments in English/language arts and math over
the course of the school year. States will also have an
end-of-year summative assessment in spring of 2015.
Starting during the 2015-16 school year, they may have
the option of including results from the instructionally
embedded component in their overall scores.

English Language Proficiency
Assessment for the 21st Century
(ELPA21)
/// Membership: 11 states
Focusing on assessments for English-language
learners. It is developing two types of assessment,
a screener to assess baseline English-language
proficiency and summative assessments by grade
band to be given near the end of the academic
year. The consortium plans to be operational in the
2016-2017 school year.

Assessment Services Supporting
ELs Through Technology
/// Membership: 35 states
Developing assessments for English-language learners.
The consortium is creating interim assessments to be used
throughout the school year. It is also developing annual, online
summative assessments, using computers with headsets
in order to assess speaking and listening, which will be
operational in late 2015.

EDUCATION WEEK

>> MARCH 13, 2014

some capacity, Mr. Evans believes
most of them are doing so for fairly
rudimentary tasks, where there are
fewer security risks-not for testing.
With the aim of ensuring that new
technologies meet districts' needs,
Smarter Balanced took the controversial step of setting up a process through
which manufacturers can have devices certified as complying with the
common-core test, in exchange for a
fee. Hardware manufacturers and developers of operating systems would
pay $35,000 a year for a product to be
tested for compatibility, while developers of assistive technologies, designed
to give special-needs students access to
tests, would pay $5,000.

Certifying Digital Devices
One of Smarter Balanced's goals
is to try to keep up with the steady
emergence of new devices, such as
Androids, iPads, and Microsoft's Windows rt tablet, and share the costs
with manufacturers of adapting new
software and testing its compatibility, said Mr. Redd.
But the certification process is
drawing a skeptical response from
Mr. Evans. He called the effort a
"noble goal," but one that will heap
new demands on manufacturers each
time they develop new technologies.
And because Smarter Balanced is the
only common-core consortium requiring certification, Microsoft could end
up making changes to devices that
are not relevant to other customers,
or even other testing groups.
"It's not a trivial engineering effort,"
Mr. Evans said.
The two major consortia have emphasized that districts should be
making technology purchases aimed
at improving teaching and learning-not merely to help them with
common-core assessments. But Mr.
Evans said it's obvious from the solicitations he sees being put forward by
districts that they are making many
of their technology purchases with
common-core testing in mind.
"A lot of the technology preparation
has been driven by the testing consortia," he said. Districts may test "two
days out of the year," he said, and "a lot
of the buying decisions are based on the
two days, rather than the other 178."
Many technology supporters,
meanwhile, predict that the level of
comfort or pain districts encounter
while administering common-core
tests will depend not only on the
devices and systems they have on
hand, but also on how much experience they and their states have with
computer-based assessments, and
overall technology, to date.
Although online testing has grown
increasingly common, the landscape is
still varied. At least 33 states were delivering at least one major test via technology as of 2011, and the rest of the
states had not yet taken that step, according to the State Educational Technology Directors Association. But the
number of states committed to online
testing, and the population of students
taking those tests, has almost certainly
risen since then, according to setda, a
nonprofit based in Glen Burnie, Md.
It stands to reason that states that

Education Week Issue 25 - Technology Counts 2014

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