21st Century Assessment?

Assessment is something of an obsession of mine.  I came to education via the field of psychology, so maybe that's why I'm especially focused on measuring what students know and can do.  I also know from experience that the way we choose to assess learning determines how we teach, for better or for worse.  In the 1990's,  I watched the state of Virginia implement a high-stakes testing regime with distressing results for teaching and learning.  I was so distressed, in fact, that I quit my job in a public school (with great sadness) so that I could teach in an environment where assessment, and therefore instruction, was conducted intelligently and effectively.  In perusing articles and blog posts concerned with assessing 21st century skills, I was somewhat frustrated to see that we are still fighting the same battles.   On it's page devoted to 21st Century Assessment, http://www.ncte.org/governance/Assessment, , NCTE lists these guidelines:

Assessment must include multiple measures and must be manageable.

Consumers of assessment data should be knowledgeable about the things the test data can and cannot say about learning.

Teachers and school should be permitted to select site-specific assessment tools from a bank of alternatives and/or to create their own.

 

To this I can only reply, "duh".  These are so sensible, so reasonable, so familiar.  They are the same recommendations I read twenty years ago when I was an undergrad education student.  Sadly, we seem to be no closer to these goals, in fact in some ways we seem farther away.

Now that I am interacting with the education system as a parent, I am even more discouraged about the role of assessment in general and testing in particular.  Most parents do not understand how statewide testing works, what it is meant to measure, or how much it influences the curriculum.  When my daughter was in third grade, I asked that she be allowed to opt out of Michigan's statewide test, the MEAP.  My request was met with resistance from school leaders because of the potential penalties the school might incur under No Child Left Behind for having less than 90% participation in testing (a statistically meaningless requirement).  In the end, I prevailed, but not before I spoke to people all the way up the line from the classroom teacher to officials at the State and National Departments of Education.  What struck me was that not one educator - teacher, principal, district, State or Federal education official, or testing specialist - defended the quality of the test.  All of them admitted that the test was terribly flawed, but that they were powerless to change things and that we should all just go along with the program.  When I talked to other parents about the situation, most were only dimly aware of the MEAP or its purpose.  They were also unaware of the extent to which the curriculum in our district is being changed (not for the better) in a misguided attempt to boost MEAP scores.

I fear that if this is the prevailing attitude, we will still be chasing the NCTE's perfectly sensible proposals twenty years from now.