Assessment and Accountability to Support Meaningful Learning

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of New Hampshire's efforts to implement a pilot accountability system designed to support deeper learning for students and powerful organization change for schools and districts. The accountability pilot, referred to as Performance Assessment of Competency Education or PACE, is grounded in a competencybased educational approach designed to ensure that students have meaningful opportunities to achieve critical knowledge and skills. These opportunities are judged by the outcomes students achieve and not by inputs such as seat time. Therefore, students must achieve these competencies before moving on to the next major learning targets and/or graduating from high school. High quality performance assessments play a crucial role in the PACE system because of the need to have assessments that measure the depths of student understanding of these complex learning targets. Performance assessments are used as both summative and interim

How do states integrate performance assessment in their systems of assessment?

“…States that have introduced performance assessments into their systems of assessment have done so based on the theory of action that more complex and authentic forms of assessment, coupled with professional development to help teachers and systems to use them well, could lead to improvements in curriculum, instruction, and student learning (e.g., Cohen & Hill, 1998;Firestone, Mayrowetz, & Fairman, 1998;Marion & Leather, 2015). A key goal in the use of performance assessments is to shift instruction from a focus on discrete, lower level content acquisition, towards the development of deeper conceptual understanding and transferable skills.…”

“…As schools and districts have worked to design systems to assess mastery, incorporating performance assessments in curricula has become increasingly widespread. Scott Marion and New Hampshire Deputy Commissioner of Education Paul Leather (2015) argue that complex performance assessments are well matched with a competency-based approach to education when they are closely connected to curriculum and instruction and "can provide opportunities for teachers to develop sophisticated understandings about the nature of student learning" (p. 6).…”

“…Marion and Leather (2015) explain, The PACE system is designed to foster deeper learning on the parts of students than is capable under current systems. This requires timely assessments linked closely with curriculum and instruction.…”

“…Recently, new policies (e.g., Marion & Leather, 2015;Menefee-Libey & Kerchner, 2015) and public opinion (e.g., Gewertz, 2014;Hagopian, 2014;Pizmony-Levy & Saraisky, 2016) are shifting the balance in accountability policy from an overreliance on standardized multiple choice tests in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics to include a more fulsome sampling of the goals of public education (e.g., deeper learning, social-emotional learning, 21st-century skills and dispositions). This paper focuses on how states and districts are "taking advantage" of the potential for changes in state and federal policy to support the creation of conditions that meet the goals of educational accountability policy in the area of meaningful learning .…”

The impact of teacher attitudes and beliefs about large-scale assessment on the use of provincial data for instructional change

“…The authors go on to state that teachers find numerous technical test design flaws in the tests themselves (also noted in: Schifter, Natarajan, Ketelhut, & Kirchgessner, 2014) which goes some way in explaining why these assessments are considered more useful at the policy level than in the classroom. The use of tools unsuited to their assigned purpose is noted by Marion & Leather (2015) as one reason that organizational change (i.e. improved instruction) is not apparent in systems with accountability-based LSAs.…”