Critical Issue: Rethinking Assessment and Its Role in Supporting Educational Reform

ISSUE: Assessment of student achievement is changing, largely because today's students face a world that will demand new knowledge and abilities. In the global economy of the 21st century, students will need to understand the basics, but also to think critically, to analyze, and to make inferences. Helping students develop these skills will require changes in assessment at the school and classroom level, as well as new approaches to large-scale, high-stakes assessment.

OVERVIEW: Assessment is changing for many reasons. Changes in the skills and knowledge needed for success, in our understanding of how students learn, and in the relationship between assessment and instruction are changing our learning goals for students and schools. Consequently, we must change our assessment strategies to tie assessment design and content to new outcomes and purposes for assessment .

As society shifts from an industrial age, in which a person could get by with basic reading and arithmetic skills, to an information age, which requires the ability to access, interpret, analyze, and use information for making decisions, the skills and competencies needed to succeed in today's workplace are changing as well. In today's atmosphere of reform, student assessment is the centerpiece of many educational improvement efforts. Policymakers hope that changes in assessment will cause teachers and schools to do things differently. Assessment reform is viewed as a means of setting more appropriate targets for students, focusing staff development efforts for teachers, encouraging curriculum reform, and improving instruction and instructional materials.

Many educators and policymakers believe that what gets assessed is what gets taught and that the format of assessment influences the format of instruction (O'Day & Smith, 1993). Contrary to our understanding of how students learn, many assessments - particularly traditional multiple-choice and true-false assessments - test facts and skills in isolation, seldom requiring students to apply what they know and can do in real-life situations. Standardized tests do not match the emerging content standards, and over-reliance on this type of assessment often leads to instruction that stresses basic knowledge and skills (Corbett & Wilson, 1991; Shepard & Smith, 1988; Smith & Cohen, 1991). Rather than encouraging changes in instruction toward the engaged learning that will prepare students for the 21st century, these tests encourage instruction of less important skills and passive learning:

"The notion that learning comes about by the accretion of little bits is outmoded learning theory. Current models of learning based on cognitive psychology contend that learners gain understanding when they construct their own cognitive maps of the interconnections among concepts and facts. Thus, real learning cannot be spoon-fed, one skill at a time." (Shepard, 1989, pp. 5-6).

Although basic skills may be important goals of education, they are often over-emphasized in an effort to raise standardized test scores. Basic skills and minimum competencies become the overarching goal of schools and teachers as accountability and minimum competency exams concentrate on these areas.

However, educators, policymakers, and parents are beginning to recognize that minimums and basics are no longer sufficient (Winking & Bond, 1995) and are calling for a closer match between the skills students learn in school and the skills they will need upon leaving school. Schools are now expected to help students develop skills and competencies in real-life, "authentic" situations, and schools are expected to graduate students who can demonstrate these abilities - often by their performance on alternative assessments rather than standardized tests.