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I really dont understand the point of comparing teachers salaries to money on assessment. We need to invest more funds into an accountability system not less. The one we have now is only measuring a limited set of skills. And yes it does cost quite a bit, but it would be worth spending ten times the amount if we could get beyond measuring proficiency and actually measure a wider range of skills we want students to be able to know and do. And actually you might need to hire more teachers to do better accountability work. It is a false choice. Assessment is a critical part of education.

What gets measured gets done. That is why we need to measure more and higher order skills.

I agree fully and completely!!! That is why our programs focus so much on showing teachers how to do performance assessment use rubrics etc. However, when high stakes tests are focused only on multiple choice and not performance assessment… its hard to convince principals to support teachers to teach that way. High stakes assessments are not going away .. nor should they. They just need to start measuring skills on the higher order end of learning… versus the lower end.

How about investing in computerized adaptive testing? Not only would we save a bundle on couriers, we’d be able to quickly identify individual student’s skill deficits and provide teachers with useful data with which to inform their instructional decisions. I think we also need to make a distinction between formative and summative assessments. I agree that teachers need much more training in how to develop and use formative assessments within their classrooms, but I think we need to maintain common summative assessments to evaluate the performance of schools and the system as a whole. Of course, those summative assessments could be made more robust and evaluate higher-order thinking skills.

I say enough with the testing. Whether its formative, performance, adaptive, or whatever the latest buzzword of the day is. Instead, let teachers teach!

Good teaching involves an interchange and feedback loop that involves a continual inherent assessment of what students know as evidenced by what they say — and then the opportunity to respond and help them figure out better what they need to know.

Of course, this would require that students would have the opportunity to participate in class, ask questions, offer insights etc., and that would mean require reasonable class sizes…oh well. But how are you supposed to address the actual needs of students as based on the results of all these assessments, to “differentiate instruction” as the jargon of the day would have it, without reasonable class sizes?

Can one of you tell me that?