With surprisingly little fanfare, Tennessee announced at the end of October that it would be asking Measurement Inc., a company based in North Carolina, to write its new tests to align to the Tennessee State Standards (also know as Common Core).
An unexpected move on the surface,especially when Measurement Inc. only accounts for 6 percent of the total US testing market according to Chalkbeat. However, the Tennessean reported that Measurement Inc. is also the company behind Tennessee’s comprehensive writing test and since 2008 has received over $50 million for that test, the contract for which has been extended through 2015. This contract would be worth just over $100 million over the next five years.
This begs the question; why do we need to spend so much for a whole new test? Aren’t the ones we have good enough? The answer is no for two reasons.
First, the existing assessments are not aligned to our new state standards, and thus create confusion among teachers as to what standards to focus on – the new ones or the now defunct Tennessee SPI system (for English and Math). This carries huge implications for curriculum decisions and pacing throughout the year.
Second, the rigor simply isn’t there on the TCAP and End of Course assessments compared to the new generation of tests. The existing tests are all multiple choice and aren’t the greatest tests in the world when it comes to testing students deep understanding of the content. They also don’t contain an open response component, making it difficult to understand the depth of our students critical thinking skills.
But don’t just take my word for it – take the words of my own students, who were one of the groups to pilot PARCC, the assessment that Tennessee will be replacing, last year. PARCC included a long open response section that required students to apply content from across the year in multiple questions.
At the end of the assessment, I gave my kids a simple survey asking them what they thought of the test and how it compared to the assessment they’d just taken. Given that any new assessment aligned to our new standards will represent a more difficult departure from what we’ve had in the past, I expected a lot of negativity in their answers. However, I was surprised by the results. Here’s an extended excerpt from my story last year detailing what I found:
I put the following question to my students immediately after completing their first mock EOC:
Assuming you knew everything on the test, do you think that this is a better test of student abilities than other math EOCs you’ve taken?
Given my concerns, I expected mostly negative feedback with a few positives here and there. Instead I was blown away when 63 percent of my kids self-reported that they felt that this test was a better measure of student abilities than other tests they’d taken. Here are some direct quotes from students that responded in the affirmative (names are withheld to protect student identity):
Yes, it’s harder to get lucky and still get the correct answer because you have to show your work plus get the correct answer
Yes, it’s preparing us for when we have to do things on our own and things won’t be given to us
Yes it would ensure that the teacher is doing his job and if the student learns. If you know everything there shouldn’t be a problem with taking it
Yes because it forces you to know the information. You can’t guess and pass
However, I did get a healthy dose of no’s. Here’s some of the feedback that summarizes the main themes in the negatives:
No, because we’re used to doing multiple choice
No, questions are confusing and weren’t explained
No because on the EOC it makes it easier and straight forward
No because you shouldn’t care about why you can get the answer, only whether or not you can get the answer
Its not just the governor that sees a need for a new assessment – kids see it as well, and they know when they get one that isn’t holding them to high standards. Even when they told me that the thought it wasn’t a better test, notice that their answers focus more on the lack of preparation for the test than on the quality of the test itself. Its also interesting to note that harder tests didn’t leave my kids demoralized or damage their self confidence. If anything, the kids were more interested in learning how to do well on the new assessment than they had ever been on their old assessments.
Of course we haven’t seen the new tests by Measurement Inc. yet, so we can’t say for certain what they will look like or if they will be of the same quality identified by my kids when they took PARCC. But there’s no denying that we need a better assessment here in Tennessee. I know it, teachers know it, and more importantly, kids know it as well, and they know one when they see it.
By Jon Alfuth
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