Different measures for different purposes

Let’s be honest: The cracks in consensus around testing were visible even before the pandemic. At this point, we can all dispense with our long tug-of-war over tests and, instead, step back and take a hard look at all the tools we can use to measure our students’ progress and target improvement.

I have spent nearly 30 years in schools and classrooms. While I wish things were otherwise, I am not anywhere near ready to declare that we have eradicated the kinds of biases and inequities in our classrooms, schools, and districts that made me a proponent of high-quality, common measures of performance in the first place.

But nor have I ever believed that standardized tests should be the only measure we consider. It’s far more useful to ask what can each measure tell us and how should we use that information? What combinations of measures give us the clearest picture of where we are? How do we help educators, parents, and students make sense of — and act on — what can sometimes seem like conflicting information?

Remote learning during the pandemic has created a new — and, frankly, long-needed — kind of transparency in public education, giving families a window into what children are being taught, and how. Many Americans are alarmed by what they’ve seen: lower expectations for some students and vast differences in how children are engaged. If single measures — whether course grades, test scores, or any other measure — ever cut it, they certainly won’t now.

We need to be real: In historically underserved communities, there hasn’t been a lot of trust in what schools report to parents about their kids’ achievement. Now more than ever before, parents are going to demand more than just a print-out of grades and test scores.

They also deserve more than those print-outs. For many Black and Brown parents, in particular, standardized testing remains bound to the painful history of assessments that have been used to shutter the gates of opportunity and, in their most heinously racist iterations, declare the intellectual “inferiority” of children of color.

That’s why, as a school system leader and educator, I look to a variety of indicators to help me gauge progress. I look at student work, assignments, and formative assessment data, and my team and I regularly seek feedback from students, teachers, and families. Like William Penuel, I think students should have some choice in how they demonstrate their learning. Further, I think there is a place for tools such as portfolios, which enable us to get a glimpse into the act of learning through student work, to examine a range of student work samples over time, and to examine the assignments those students were given, so that we have a clear sense of what was asked of them.

But I also look to move the needle on annual state assessments.

I’m sure that Penuel and I agree that students need to be able to read and write well; that they need to have the kinds of skills in math and science that will help them to gain entry to trade programs and credit-bearing college courses; and that, as participants in this democracy, they need a solid foundation in civics, social studies, and the arts. I suspect that we disagree, however, on the need for school and district leaders to see how students are performing in relation to specific standards in those areas, particularly to see whether they are stretching toward an advanced level of mastery.

The teenage daughters I go home to each night are blessed with their own God-given gifts. My job (and joy) as a parent is to nurture their unique interests and talents; their ideas and ways of thinking. But it is also my job to ensure that they are equipped with the essential tools they need to move forward in the world, wherever they choose to go and whatever they pursue. I don’t want any of my children’s teachers to allow them to fall back on the thing that feels most natural for them right now. Yes, I want their talents and uniqueness to be honored, celebrated, and grown — but I also want them to be held to high standards, and to be challenged in ways that allow them to grow in areas they have yet to discover.

That’s what I want for all 78,000 of our students in Baltimore City.

To me, the real work ahead is about coming together and figuring out the right combinations of indicators we ought to be considering, a combination that — at least for now — needs to include classroom-level student work, grades, and data from common assessments. Our challenge is to boost the quality of each of these measures to give our students, families, educators, and communities the rich, honest information they deserve.

This article is an invited response to “Possible futures for equitable educational assessment” by William R. Penuel, part of Kappan‘s Reimagining American Education: Possible Futures series, sponsored by the Spencer Foundation.