Education Week Issue 25 - Technology Counts 2014 - 8

Even in a tech-savvy
environment such as
Summit High School
in Bend, Ore., the
transition to techenabled formative
assessment has
been challenging.

Building Better
Feedback Loops
An Oregon high school is testing a mix of
technologies and formative assessment
approaches to personalize instruction

By Benjamin
Herold

EDUCATION WEEK

>> MARCH 13, 2014

Bend, Ore.

he digital learning tools flooding schools come
with a tantalizing promise: real-time feedback on what children know, combined with
fingertip access to a dizzying array of tailored
instructional materials, resulting in more customized instruction from teachers and a more
personalized learning experience for each student.
It's a technology-enhanced version of the feedback loop that
educators call formative assessment. But even in the most
tech-savvy public schools, the digital overhaul of this vital
classroom practice is just beginning, and skeptics worry that
many of the new products being touted by ed-tech companies will serve primarily to enable more efficient use of poor
formative-assessment techniques.
"I think the potential of technology to improve formative
assessment is significant, but I can't say I've really seen it
in action yet," said Margaret Heritage, the assistant director for professional development at the National Center for
Research on Evaluation, Standards & Student Testing, or
cresst, at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It's
not about giving teachers digital tools. It's about helping
them embrace a different way of teaching."
Since well before the ed-tech revolution began, experts like
Ms. Heritage have contended that effective classroom forma-

tive assessment is patchy at best. They've pointed to a lack of
time, training, and resources for busy classroom teachers and
an overemphasis on high-stakes standardized testing as barriers to improvement.
Sensing a need, vendors large and small have pounced.
Publishers and giant education service companies are rolling out comprehensive digital platforms and curricula in
the hopes that districts will embrace all-in-one solutions.
Startups and app makers, meanwhile, are offering a growing menu of smaller-scale tools aimed at improving specific
components of the classroom-feedback loop.

'Hybrid' Teaching
Both approaches are on display here at Summit High
School, located in the foothills of the Cascade mountains in
an upscale part of this ski town in central Oregon. Some
teachers are using a new digital platform known as peak12
(short for Personalize, Engage, and Achieve with K12), the
latest product from the Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc., the
country's largest private provider of online educational services to precollegiate schools. Others have embraced an à la
carte approach, mixing and matching classroom tools such
as Socrative, a free app for quickly scanning dozens of student responses with the swipe of a finger.
The early returns are uneven, but encouraging.
Almost overnight, Summit teachers have begun using the
new technologies to track the time students spend on reading
assignments, take quick snapshots of how well whole classrooms understand new mathematics concepts, and examine
the complexities of teenagers' relationship to writing.
Summit Principal Alice DeWittie has encouraged the
experimentation.
"The core principle is looking at student work, and based on
that, changing what comes next in your instruction," Ms. De-

Education Week Issue 25 - Technology Counts 2014

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