Fusing standards and assessment: can technology be the glue? (21st Century Assessment).

Want to get a rise out of any education reformer? Ask about alignment of state tests and state standards. If the rolling eyes and exasperated sighing don't tell the story, just probe a little. You'll hear about state tests that have been in place since the Paleolithic era--or at least since before standards were a glimmer in some crusading teacher's eye. Or you'll hear about state standards that cost millions and took years to develop and are still too vague and squishy to be tested.

What you won't hear, except in the smallest handful of states, is that the standards and assessments link in a seamless system that let all parties see what kids know and are able to do.

UGLY DUCKLING PHASE? Recent research confirms this perilous state of affairs, including the latest Making Standards Matter report from the American Federation of Teachers, among other reports.

No matter who one blames--the test makers, the bureaucrats, the politicians or just the vagaries of history--it's hard to find anyone who doesn't hope it's just an awkward phase in the life cycle of accountability. The idea that we might be stuck for good in this ugly adolescent moment of parts that don't quite fit together is too awful to contemplate.

Meanwhile, a whole generation of kids is being taught according to a set of standards (best case!) and tested on something else altogether.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH It doesn't have to be that way. A handful of small companies show why. They are using the power of technology to amass, quality-check and deploy test items closely calibrated to actual content standards. And they help teachers use the results to make concrete instructional decisions-to use testing as diagnosis rather than autopsy with a blunt instrument.

The folks who are doing the hard work of bringing standards and assessment together through technology have a lot in common. They've typically been in the business a long time, have built up their databases slowly and carefully, and specialize in bell-less, whistle-free computing. And they have quietly begun to change districts' expectations about technology's role in the larger process.

A case in point is the Northwest Evaluation Association, a non-profit that was launched by educators in Oregon and Washington more than 20 years ago. Back then, according to Executive Director Allan Olson, the goal was to create a system of tests-pencil-and-paper tests-that told teachers something meaningful about what kids knew, what impact their teaching was having over time, and what to do next And, oh yeah, to deliver this information quickly. "As educators, we were very frustrated by the lack of data we could use to make a difference in children's learning," Olson says.

MEASURING AGAINST STANDARDS The tests from the association focus on tracking individual academic growth the way a yardstick measures a child's physical growth. AS states and districts began putting content standards in place, the Northwest group aligned its growing collection of test items to measure student mastery of those standards. By extension, wherever state standardized tests align at an with content standards, these tests provide a decent predictor of student success on the state exams.

The advent of technology and its infusion into schools has made it possible for companies like NWEA to amass test banks that are tens of thousands of items deep; create parallel databases of state standards, objectives and benchmarks; and provide targeted tests by combining the two on the fly. Even better, technology allows students to take tests like NWEP/s in an electronic environment that adapts to their performance and provides results-from the individual child up through district aggregates-in a relative heartbeat 

And how do these standards-based tests relate to the state-mandated exams that may shortly become a fact in every public school student's life? In many ways, tests provided by companies like NWEA, EDVision and Homeroom.com do what educators wish their state tests could do: provide actionable data in a timely fashion, so that teaching and curriculum can be adjusted to ensure student mastery of key academic subjects. That's pretty different from spitting out a score that can make a kid repeat eighth grade and a superintendent look for another job but have very little impact on learning.

Mickey Revenaugh, [e-mail], is vice president of product planning and research at MindSurf Networks. Formerly, she helped launch the E-rate program.