Is it a House … Or a Pile of Bricks?

Abstract

IN 1996 the Maine legislature established the Learning Results, comprehensive set of standards to be achieved by all students.1 The legislators further decreed that student achievement of these standards must be measured by combination of state and assessments. Toward this end, Maine school leaders now face the daunting charge to develop local systems. It is not yet clear whether the Maine Department of Education will subject district's to procedural review and approval, but the stakes are high nonetheless: by 2007, high school diploma in Maine will be tied to achievement of the Learning Results, and systems are to provide the means for certifying this achievement. To be sure, the welcome upside of these developments is that school leaders in Maine are being asked to meld state and achievement information for certifying achievement of state standards. This synthetic approach runs counter to the practice in 18 states -- soon to be 24 -- where high school graduation is linked inextricably to passing state test.2 However, clear downside of the Maine policy is the absence of clarification -- from the state legislature, from the experience of other states, or from the professional literature -- regarding just what is. While the term local is clear enough, assessment system is often used in reference to state's testing program. For example, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, standards-based state test, is administered to all students in grades 4, 8, and 10.3 So again, just what is local In particular, what makes such in fact, system? This is the fundamental question with which Maine school leaders are currently wrestling. The Maine Department of Education formed an advisory group, of which I was member, to deliberate this question. Fueled by our resolve to provide helpful guidelines to school leaders and informed by the thoughts of others,4 we identified what we believed to be important features of system. Insofar as Maine is not alone in calling for the creation of such systems, our observations may provide guidance for school leaders in other states as well. Indeed, as more and more states begin to revisit the advisability of single-test graduation policies,5 the notion of an may be seen as an increasingly attractive alternative to high-stakes testing. This is now even more likely as consequence of the No Child Left Behind Act, which allows states to use combination of state and assessments in satisfying the requirement for annual testing in grades 3 through 8.6 What Is Local Assessment System? A system, the American Heritage Dictionary tells us, is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming complex whole. Elements in must cohere. Thus is coherent, coordinated plan for assessment. It is constellation of measures that, together, yield data that document progress toward student mastery of announced learning targets. Clearly, the is made up of individual assessments. But collection of assessments does not entail any more than pile of bricks constitutes house. Therefore, the fundamental question for school leaders is this: In what sense does their plan constitute of assessments, rather than mere collection of assessments? In the view of the advisory group, has at least six important features. First, the assessments collectively are relevant to announced learning targets. That is, provides evidence of student achievement regarding formally specified, rather than tacit or implied, learning targets. Further, these learning targets are stated with sufficient specificity to communicate measurable outcomes -- outcomes that are directly amenable to measurement and assessment. …