Guidance for Politics-Free Student Assessment.

What can be done to demonstrate to the public and policy-makers that improvement is really taking hold in our public schools? One way is to ensure a fair and impartial assessment process that looks at how well young people are learning what they're being taught.

The National Forum on Assessment, a consortium of two dozen organizations, including AASA, offers a helpful step in that process with its new publication, "Principles and Indicators for Student Assessment Systems."

The advice is timely. Congress keeps clamoring for better results from public school districts using student assessment systems that typically defy comparison from one district to the next or one state to another. The National Forum said its guiding principles are intended to ensure assessment practices are part of wider school reform. Assessment, the group said, "should support and be integrated with changes in instruction and curriculum that improve student learning."

The National Forum's principles call for coherence among the various assessment practices and instruments now used in public education, noting, "Coherence can be achieved by ensuring that all assessments, both classroom and large-scale, support important learning and are compatible with how students learn."

The National Forum called the demand of some elected officials for more large-scale testing misguided. The group described large-scale tests as "those mandated, designed, conducted, and reported from outside the classroom, usually for district or state evaluation or accountability purposes." They called instead for better classroom assessment as the best means to inform instruction and learning.

A Key Distinction

In an effort to deal with testing mandates and the use of test results primarily for public and political criticism of public schools, the National Forum's report declares, "Large-scale assessments for accountability primarily should use sampling procedures to help evaluate and improve school programs."

That's an important distinction--sampling procedures, not school-by-school or state-by-state comparisons. The main reason for giving tests should be to help students learn more about the material being taught, not to satisfy or provide ammunition to some finger-pointing politician.

The report lists a series of ideal indicators to be used as a checklist in evaluating or developing assessment systems. "We understand that they will not be implemented immediately or with great ease. We do firmly hold, however, that education systems must move toward meeting these assessment principles."

The National Forum says the principles can be used by policy-makers to rethink the role of large-scale assessments and ensure support for classroom-based assessment; by teachers and administrators to guide assessment reform in classrooms and schools; by higher education institutions to help "in reforming their admissions and placement policies and in their own instructional and assessment practices."

Prerequisite Conditions

The National Forum which is co-chaired by Ruth Mitchell of the Council for Basic Education and Monty Neill of FairTest, lists four conditions as "necessary for schools to ensure successful learning and [to] support the assessment practices promoted" by the group's principles. Those conditions are:

1. Schools should organize to support the multiple learning needs and approaches of all their members;

2. Schools should work to understand how learning takes place and what facilitates learning;

3. Schools should establish clear statements of desired learning for all students and help all students;

4. All schools should have equitable and adequate learning resources and classroom conditions, including capable teachers, a rich curriculum, safe and hospitable buildings, sufficient equipment and materials, and essential support services.

The National Forum's seven principles (see below) for addressing these conditions serve as useful goals if educational leaders hope to make assessment of students meaningful and realistic to students, parents, and policymakers.

Seven Guiding Principles of Assessment

The seven principles for student assessment systems, as defined by the National Forum on Assessment (but not yet endorsed by it):

1. The primary purpose of assessment is to improve student learning.

2. Assessment for other purposes supports student learning.

3. Assessment systems are fair to all students.

4. Professional collaboration and development supports assessment.

5. The broad community participates in assessment development.

6. Communication about assessment is regular and clear.

7. Assessment systems are regularly reviewed and improved.