"Beyond the Bubble" discusses how technology can help to both deepen and broaden assessment practice—by assessing more comprehensively and by assessing new skills and concepts. From your perspective, what are the most important ideas in the report? What's missing and needs more attention?

Posted by: Education Sector from Education Sector

Margaret Honey from New York Hall of Science responds:

The report asks a critical question.  Can technology transform the ways in which we assess our students?   The report does a highly effective job of illustrating what’s possible and discussing many of the policy hurdles that must be addressed if we are to move forward with a more enlightened assessment agenda.  However, like most things the devil is in the detail.  If it’s true, as many assert, that the future of our economy and the future of civil society in increasingly based on our collective ability to innovate, than we have to take a serious look at the competencies that innovation requires.  Robert Sternberg describes a set of new foundational skills that are based analytical, practical, and creative ways of solving problems.  And, as the report acknowledges, the measure of success in today’s economy is not just what you know, but how you use what you know to imagine new ways to get work done, solve problems, and create new knowledge.  If this is the task at hand, technologies are necessary, but not sufficient. 

I’ll give a specific example of what I mean.  There’s a growing practice in the assessment field that’s known as Curriculum Based Assessment (CBM).  Two of the most well known researchers in this area are Doug and Lynn Fuchs.  CBM researchers are interested in identifying deficit; so rather than looking at the kinds of skills and competencies that children bring to a task, they focus on measuring exactly what a students lacks.  The intervention strategy is based on remediation, and remediation is almost always focused on basic skills taught in isolation.  This is a very 20th  century notion of assessment that is sometimes dressed up in 21st century clothing through the use of technology. Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures. Hence, educators need to build assessments for learning, rather than solely assessments of learning.  The limitations of CBM assessment is something that the education field needs to be aware of. 

In an Education Week Commentary (5.23.07) that I wrote with Charles Fadel of Cisco and Shelley Pasnik of the Education Development Center, we wrote that 21st century assessment will need to:

•    Be largely performance based. We need to know how students apply content knowledge to critical thinking, problem solving and analysis tasks throughout their education to help students hone this ability, and understand that successful learning is as much about the process as it is about facts and figures.
•    Make students’ thinking visible. The assessments should reveal the kinds of conceptual strategies a student uses to solve a problem.
•    Generate data that is actionable. Teachers need to be able to understand what the assessment reveals about students’ thinking, and school administrators and policy makers, as well as teachers, need to be able to use assessment information to determine how to create better opportunities for students.
•    Build capacity in both teachers and students. Assessments should provide frequent opportunity for feedback and revision so that both teachers and students learn from the process.
•    Be part of a comprehensive and well-aligned continuum. Assessment should be an ongoing process that is well aligned to the “target” concepts or core ideas that are reflected in the standards.

Technology is an essential tool in enabling assessments to be designed with appropriate levels of complexity.  Technology is also an excellent medium through which to present and capture performance tasks.  And, technologies have developed to the point where the scoring of complex tasks can be made both efficient and accurate.  But most importantly, as Beyond the Bubble makes clear, it is the cognitive underpinnings of assessment design that are critical for realizing transformative potential.

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

Margaret provided a very thoughtful and comprehensive response, so to avoid redundancy I will add only a few additional comments now. I think Bill's report does a nice job of helping to remind us of where we were in the early to mid 1990's with performance assessments that pushed students to wrestle with important aspects of content and skills. Hopefully, the report can serve as a wake-up call for where we need to move again after years of multiple-choice morass. This report describes how computers can help move us toward richer forms of assessment and there is no question that this is true. But it is critical to remember that we do not need to wait until states fully implement computer-based testing to move to richer forms of assessment. My only criticism of the report is that it does not make this point clearly enough. While there is no question that computers offer tremendous promise for innovative test item types, we can go a long way toward improved assessment without the use of electricity. So let's hope the new administration encourages performance assessment use and more meaningful approaches to teaching and learning than we've seen for the past eight years.

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

 

Thank you again to Scott, Margaret, and Charles for engaging in this discussion. I look forward to our readers' questions. There a just a few ideas that I'd like to highlight from the report. Technology holds enormous potential for helping us to solve some of the challenges to effective assessment -- especially with regards to making more complex and performance-based assessments both scalable and reliable across districts and states. But, Scott and Margaret are absolutely correct: it's not all about technology. In the second half of the report I talk about the importance of aligning assessment with standards, curriculum, instruction, and teacher training. And, it's important to remember that our technology tools are only as good as the cognitive models on which they are based. Related, I hope that we have questions and ideas about how to ensure that the cognitive and statistical models underlying our assessments are transparent and open to testing and improvement.

Missing from the report is a discussion of the advances and potential for the various cognitive tutoring applications, such as those highlighted by my colleague Kevin Carey in his article on math instruction at Virginia Tech University. And, while I briefly touch on the application of gaming technology, there's much more to write about in this area.

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

I like many of Margaret's points, but I am a little concerned about trends toward emphasizing student performance over knowledge, because I think they are intrinsically linked, and because in my experience, some schools use emphasis on performance or "experience-based" learning to mask, wittingly or unwittingly, student deficiencies in knowledge. How do we get around that? Bill's could have written his report, for example, without any references to the research base or to current exemplary projects. It could have been well-rated on clarity of writing and problem-solving. But without a grounding in facts, it would be unclear to the reader whether his work was relevant to the knowledge base of research (which NAS and others do beautifully) and good practice. You want to see evidence that a student has worked through various issues and has gone beyond mere creativity to integrate ideas grounded in something other than imagination. It's also much more convincing to a reader, which will be an issue when the student enters the world of either college or work.

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

Bill - what needs more attention from my perspective is scope and sequence. How do you get from here to there? What needs to be done first to increase the likelihood that any such effort, eventually, is high quality, comprehensive, and systemic. Do you possibilities in the "Race to the Top" fund, re: assessments and data systems?

Margaret's pointing out CBM (sometimes called "progress monitoring") is absolutely correct. This type of formative assessment is not only too-often ignored by general-ed researchers, it's ALSO being ignored by the think-tank community. If you read the NCIEA's "The Role of Interim Assessments in a Comprehensive Assessment System: A Policy Brief " (recently published), you'll see that the report entirely skips between a definition of formative assessment that is ENTIRELY informal and casual to the type of periodic/benchmark assessments that are much more complicated than CBS/progress monitoring.

What's necessary to turn technology-based assessment away from the bells-and-whistles assumption and devote enough attention to the "here's what we can do NOW that has documented research support?"

Posted by: Sherman Dorn from University of South Florida

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

Sherman targets formative assessment right where it should be headed.

One obstacle, however, teacher union opposition to any data system which potentially links student performance data to a specific teacher, for fear it will be used in evaluation, tenure, pay for performance decisions etc. Individual teachers in LA, for example, have complained that they cannot even get data on how their students do on state tests because the link has been blocked there. But UTLA, their collective bargaining agent, opposes it. Recently, UTLA opposed the expansion of district-based formative assessments for the same reason, even though they seem to be doing exactly what Sherman is calling for.

Basically, you have a "baby/bathwater" situation. But surely, until issues are resolved about how to use student data to evaluate teachers, agreement could be reached to use such data to help teachers and schools better serve students in as close to "real-time" as possible. 

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

Of course I feel compelled to respond to this question since I am once of the authors of the report that "ignored" CBM. In all fairness, we were focused on assessments designed to be used at the school and district level, while hoping to provide useful information to classroom teachers. CBM, as I understand it, is focused within the classroom and not necessarily designed to be aggregated beyond the classroom. We had to focus this paper and tried hard to focus on these interim/benchmark tests. On the other hand, Sherman sounds like a supporter of CBM, so he should probably be happy that we stayed away from doing a critical analysis of this enterprise. I have only begun to look into CBM and what I've seen makes me very nervous. These multiple "measures" are treated as if the inferences drawn from each of the measures are based upon some sort of valid equating. Everything I've seen thus far-and admittedly I need to look into this much more-suggests that inferences made about student growth and not supported by a psychometric foundation.

Finally, and related to Bill's report, CBM fits smack within a fairly outdated behaviorist conception of student learning. Margaret hinted at this yesterday in one of her first posts. The type of alignment among cognitive (and social cultural) models of student learning, rich assessments, and sound interpretations called for in Knowing What Students Know (Pellegrino, et al, 2001) are a far cry from what I've seen with CBM.

 

So what types of technology-based testing are currently available (and where would I find them)?Posted by: Brian Woodward from Paint Branch High School

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

Thanks for your question, Brian. In the report, I describe a number of different examples of technology-based testing. However, I make an important distinction between technology that is used to automate current processes and ways in which technology can be used to develop much more effective assessment practices. Over half the states use computers to deliver a portion of the annual state testing programs mandated by NCLB. But, for the most part, these states are just using technology to automate the same multiple-choice, fill-in-the bubble tests. The real potential for technology is to use it as a tool to help us assess more comprehensively, assess new skills/concepts, and develop much more useful evidentiary data to help inform instruction.

Margaret Honey from New York Hall of Science responds:

Brian - Another resource is to look at the Partnership for 21st Century Skills site, and particularly their Route 21 resource.  Using the search engine the site will point you to a number of assessments that are currently in use or under development.  And, Bill's colleague, Elena Silva wrote a very good report that is full of resources called "Measuring Skills for the 21st Century." 

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

Unfortunately, the best models are not found in education.  I suggest looking in medical education for the kinds of examples that fit the models that Bill is promoting in his report.  The IMMEX system out of UCLA is a good place to start.  CRESST is working on a research study using PowerSource, which is an algebra curriculum/assessment system that relies on computers somewhat. 

How do you see the development of systems of performance assessment? For example, at one end of a spectrum might be the previous Nebraska model, or what the NY Performance Standards Consortium is doing, which is to combine limited large scale assessments with more classroom-based assessments. In this range could be construction of banks of tasks—electronic or otherwise—that teachers could draw on as fit their work. At the other would be all state-centralized performance tasks (computer or otherwise). Local will allow more flexbility and in the end depth and complexity, probably demand more of teachers, and would be economically feasible. (I am assuming that in general these tasks will have to be scored by humans, hence if there are many, it will have to be part of what teachers do in classrooms.) But for any accountability uses, some set of tasks would have to be evaluated across schools for adequate comparability (which can be done by moderation—centrally re-scoring samples). I would appreciate hearing folks thoughts on options for developing such systems, ones you would point to as useful examples, etc.

Posted by: Monty Neill from FairTest

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

Thanks for your question, Monty. Since no one assessment can serve all of the important purposes (including both formative and summative) and various educational levels (classroom, district, state, etc.), we need to think about a coherent assessment system. In Beyond the Bubble, I talk about the importance of a cognitive model that undergirds a system of both summative and formative assessment (Margaret also references these points above).

Here's the challenge: For summative tests, it will be extremely important to ensure that the tasks and measures are reliable across schools and districts--performance-based testing in the 1990s failed in large part because scores were not comparable from school-to-school or year-to-year. That's important because we don't want low expectations for some students and high expectations for others (across states is another issue). Expense was another factor. Also, summative testing is going to be much more time limited than formative, or assessment for learning. We are going to want more teacher-directed flexibility and depth with formative assessment. Ideally, the formative side allows for much more depth and personalization to individual student needs -- it doesn't need to be comparable across schools.

The promise of technology is that we can do performance type assessments in a much more reliable, and eventually, cost-effective way on the summative side. It can help us solve the trade-offs between standardization and performance tasks that lead to problems when we have to choose one or the other. And, we won't need human graders for everything. In fact, part of what my report describes is the possibility to use technology to get even better information on the processes that students take in approaching and answering questions. Thus, leading to better evidence -- especially to guide learning. For example, I was just at an ETS presentation where the presenter was describing possible formative information to guide instruction that could be gained from data about where students paused in typing essay responses. Please do not assume that this use of technology is opposed to teacher interaction. Teachers must have deep content expertise and specific skills to understand and use the insights these sophisticated assessments could produce.

The CBAL and Calipers examples in the report are good examples of performance-based systems that span both summative and formative uses. Also, it's important to remember that multiple choice and other standardized formats are still valuable. We'll want to be smart about what we want to measure, the evidence we seek through assessment, and the best tools to use to get it.

Margaret Honey from New York Hall of Science responds:

Monty, here's a thought that is likely to ruffle some feathers!  Someone else raised the issue of how you get from point A to point B.  Assessment is such an expensive proposition.  What if one of our major foundations or a consortium of foundations invested in building high quality assessments and made them available to states for FREE.  In exchange, the State would have to agree to commit a percentage of their current assessment dollars to professional development - to building teachers' knowledge and skills in ways that enable them to educate students for tests that are focused on the application of knowledge rather than the memorization of facts.  I realize there are all sorts of issues here that have to do with who decides what's good enough.... but I believe that if the right entities were behind this kind of initiative, they could pull together a broad-based coalition to guide the decision making process.  Of course, our government could decide to move in this direction with NAEP -- particularly the new science assessment that from everything I hear will be genuinely innovative -- but government makes people nervous, and raises concerns about the autonomy of states, and so on.  None the less, if the strategy were "opt-in for free or very little cost, in exchange for committing $ to meaningful PD" that could be a powerful way to get from point A to B.

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

Monty and Margaret -

I proposed a system that has features both of you talk about (Ed Week, November opinion piece, "Could Open Source Testing Help Resolve the Testing Impasse?"). A matrix of items, like Monty proposes, from which states and localities could draw, from which there could be common comparisons. Also the goal would be to have it be free, as Margaret proposes i.e,, a bank of items from which folks could draw (that's the "open source" part).

I do think some of Marty's points warrant a note of caution. Local assessments are fine for local purposes. But there need to be checks on objectivity. Especially if the same people doing the scoring are the ones who may be evaluated based on the results; there is just too much potential for bias. And I don't just mean of a devious nature. Bias seeps in to such things in all kinds of unintentional ways so, let's be clear, it's not an issue of character or ethics.

Also, for comparability purposes - between districts or between states - items and scoring need to be identical. Re-scoring is not a viable proposal for comparison purposes. No peer-reviewed journal would accept such as system for comparing interventions, and I don't think we should in the policy/real world either.

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

There is an implication in Monty's question that classroom assessment are rich, performance based tasks compared with the low-level multiple-choice tests administered by the state. It appears that Monty hasn't been in schools lately to listen to the hum of scanning machines scoring these "wonderful" classroom assessments. When I was the director of assessment in Wyoming, we included extended performance tasks on the state assessment (the first state assessment under IASA) that shocked the field. Why was it a shock? Because teachers-by their own admission-had not moved to the depth of knowledge called for in our performance tasks. Therefore, I would argue that state tests can serve as a model of what we want to see in the classroom.

Now, Margaret is correct-even if she was being a bit cynical-that we need to spend a great deal of money and time on professional development if the tasks/assessments that Monty would like to distribute to classrooms-which I also support-will have the desired effect. Bringing us back to Beyond the Bubble, this professional development needs to focus on, among other things, helping teachers use modern conceptions of learning (a major shortcoming of most teachers) to help advance student learning. Bill is correct in both his post to this question and Beyond the Bubble, in describing the need for a common and up-to-date model of learning to serve as the foundation of formative and summative assessment. The National Research Council hosted a workshop and produced a report in 2003 called Bridging the Gap that was focused on this very issue.

I disagree with Bill, however, with the statement in his post, "...performance-based testing in the 1990s failed in large part because scores were not comparable from school-to-school or year-to-year." While this is partially true, the larger truth is that these assessments were being used in relatively high stakes accountability systems (e.g., Kentucky). In hindsight, the accountability system could have been designed to be more reliable across years and these rich performance and portfolio assessments could have still played a major role.

 

Those of us who work in the area of special education are optimistic that technology will enable assessments to become more 'user friendly' for students with disabilities, that is, employ the concepts universal design that will make assessments more accessible to more students, including students with disabilities. My question is, have you given any thought as to how universally designed assessments would fit into your vision of how technology can address the future of student assessment?Posted by: Nancy Reder from NASDSE

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

I really appreciate this question. I share your desire that technology incorporate universal design principles and wrote a little bit about this (but not nearly enough) in the report. For interested readers, I cite several great sources for further detail in the report.

Universal design allows designers to address the divergent needs of special populations and at the same time, increase usability for everyone. Technology allows developers to apply these same universal design concepts to educational assessment. Digital materials are inherently flexible, making it feasible to customize materials and methods to each individual. Rather than provide special accommodations, such as a separately printed test booklet with enlarged print for students with reduced vision, technology-enabled testing can embed a variety of accommodations into the same program.

The key here is to ensure that we bake these principles into any technology-enabled assessment design from the beginning.

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

Nancy- I'm glad you raised this question, because I think this is one of the major advantages of computer-based testing. I suggest looking at the work of Mike Russell of Boston College and Nimble Tools to see what I consider the most exciting use of technology for advancing what people have been advocating for accessible assessment experiences. They offer a fully integrated assessment experience where accommodations can be provide "on demand" and then get out of the way when they are not needed.

It seems that a lot of the focus in educational technology has been on using it to address the needs of students with regards to learning current content and achieving on assessments of current skills. The majority of that content, those assessments, and those ways of thinking about education are rooted firmly in a 20th century mindset. But, that's like preparing our kids for today as if tomorrow is going to demand only the skills of yesterday. Why not use the real holistic, communicative, entrepreneurial and problem solving, community-fostering, and interactive offerings of Web 2.0 and emerging technologies to prepare students for the future that likely awaits them rather than the present which in this evolving Digital Age will soon be but a hazily remembered period of transition into a fully-distinct 21st century?Posted by: Shelly Blake-Plock from TeachPaperless

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

Thanks for your question, Shelly. The advent of the Internet and digital communications is changing academia, the workplace, media, and forms of civic participation quite rapidly. That said, I don't see this as an either/or equation. For instance, in science, content and process are inextricably linked.  Scientific practices, such as inquiry, cannot be taught in isolation from the underlying concepts.

I think of President Obama's campaign as a powerful example of both new and old. His campaign was incredibly adept at new forms of communication, yet an important component of the President's remarkable eloquence is his ability to connect his ideas to well-known and honored American historical themes.

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

It sounds to me that you are arguing for the same sorts of things that Bill is doing in Beyond the Bubble.  There is no question that we need to prepare students for things for which we don't even know about yet.  But we can't do that by guessing at the content that is coming in the future.  Rather, we need to ensure that our current educational approaches focus on the big ideas of the disciplines (because these big ideas do not change that fast!) and on the process by which students develop expertise in these disciplines as well as the skills to continuing their learning when faced with novel situations.  I think that technology-based assessments of the type described in Beyond the Bubble can help encourage this type of learning.

Is integrating technology and assessment likely to be a part of the forthcoming reauthorization of NCLB? How would you advise Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the subject? What needs to occur over the short, medium, and long terms to facilitate this?Posted by: Education Sector from Education Sector

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

I would advise the new Secretary against requiring the intergration of technology with assessment and/or instruction.  But I would advise him to provide both considerable research and development funding so that we can improve our current knowledge base and incentive funding for states and/or districts to experiment with current versions of innovative systems.

Margaret Honey from New York Hall of Science responds:

I agree with Scott that Secretary Duncan should place a priority on R&D funding for the development of technology based assessments that focus on measuring the application of knowledge to problem-solving. The UK invested approximately $50 million in the development of their Key State 3 ICT assessment. And, while they ultimately decided not to move forward with the assessment as a statutory requirement, the R&D work that they supported was pioneering. With respect to the reauthorization of ESEA, it would be a substantial step toward moving schools into the 21st century if the law contained a provision and funding to help state begin to put in place the infrastructure that would enable them to support technology-based assessment. 

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

I agree there needs to be more R & D. But I think there should be room left open for truly innovative approaches that link technology and assessment. It seems consistent with the themes that Duncan is promoting on innovation and a "Race to the Top."

At what point do you think R & D should end and something larger scale should begin. Other professions (e.g., nursing and medicine, as Bill points out) use it routinely. So does my local Division of Motor Vehicles (not that they should be a model for anything; it just seems like education is behind just about every other field).

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

To begin with, if we want to see dramatically better assessments, we can't continue to invest solely in the current practice. We must fund both research AND development. As my colleagues noted, we definitely need more research to develop these tools (and the cognitive models behind them). But, we can't just focus on isolated research projects. One of the things that I found in my research was an immense and growing disconnect between a number of innovative research projects and the current mode of testing in schools. So, we have to make sure that the development part of R&D -- putting it into practice -- really happens. I'd like to see applied applications that involve competitive awards and partnerships among researchers, psychometricians, testing companies, state officials, and educators. Rather than just award contracts, funds should support both early developmental work and provide large incentives for actual district or state-level implementation. We're going to have to allow some pilots and experimentation beyond the parameters of NCLB -- very tricky to ensure these are a true "race to the top." Given the importance of science, the deficiency of current science assessment practices, and the number of promising research projects in this field, science  is a logical place to start. Science also helps to avoid some of the potential problems with undermining accountability in math/reading.

Also, because the cognitive and data models underlying technology-enabled assessments will be used to gauge student progress and guide instruction, they must be open for public review and improvement, ensuring that evaluators can test and enhance these models along the way. This is critical to include with any funding so that very early we create an open and transparent feedback loop.

I'm working on a policy brief right now to try to answer the very important "what do we do about it" question. I welcome specific ideas from our readers!

Elena Silva’s "Measuring Skills for the 21st Century" notes a new trend of measuring a higher level of intellectual demand including problem solving and thinking analytically and creatively to solve “real-world” scenarios. "Beyond the Bubble" describes the shift towards technology-based assessments. If using technology-based assessments and measuring problem solving, critical thinking abilities, and real-world applications is the future of K-12 testing, what impact do you foresee this having on poor and disadvantaged students who may not be as familiar with certain types of tasks and with technology in general? What would you suggest needs to be done to prepare these students for computer-based and “real-world problem solving” types of assessments? Having been profiled in Dr. Silva’s previous report, we believe that we at the CWRA have a vested interest in these topics.Posted by: Chris Jackson from College and Work Readiness Assessment [cwra]

Charles Barone from Democrats for Education Reform responds:

I have been wondering the same thing.

This goes back to my "scope and sequence" question.

It's not just students and their families. It's schools as a whole. And it's not just poor schools.

I know of no other professional system where technology is employed so infrequently or so archaically. I cannot think of another profession, for example, that requires at least a B.A. degree, where the professional does not routinely have a computer at their desk. Where the use of email is not a given. Where web-based tools are not used routinely to communicate with consumers.

I have a friend who is a Ph.D./J.D. and lives in Montgomery County who has two children who attend a "good" school, in a good neighborhood. She was informed recently that her child was a month behind on her homework (it turned out to be a week behind, but that's a classroom management story). The parent asked if their was a website where the homework assignments were posted (the answer was no). She asked if the teacher could email the homework assignments. The teacher said she had an email address but had never used it and wasn't sure what it was, and anyway the homework wasn't in electronic form.

I don't think anecdotes are always good bases for policy, but my experience is that this parent's experience is the norm. 

There is a huge gap between what is possible and what people are ready to do. It's as much a matter of changing the culture of schools (perhaps more so) than it is one of technology, R & D or professional development.

My friend, btw, is checking out two Catholic schools and both of which, so far, post homework on their websites and have teachers who use email.

Bill Tucker from Education Sector responds:

Hi Chris -- excellent question. Clearly, a high stakes test can't be the first time that a student sees a technology-enabled assessment or novel assessment task/problem (regardless of whether it is via computer or paper/pencil). Beyond that, there's a little bit of a conundrum here. We definitely need to be concerned about both access and bias issues. But, at the same time, the type of testing that I wrote about in Beyond the Bubble has great potential to give us much better evidence to help both teachers and students improve their learning -- and given the research on formative assessment (when done well), this would benefit struggling students the most. Unfortunately, I don't have a silver bullet to solve this problem. (I hope readers with great ideas will e-mail me.) What I do know is that kids with means have and will increasingly see very rich and technology-enabled learning environments -- in both formal and informal settings. So, it's extemely important for us to ensure that all kids, in our public schools, have access to these same types of opportunities.

One other very important note to mention from my colleague Elena Silva's report, Measuring Skills in the 21st Century: "While many policymakers, including [former] Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, have emphasized the need for schools to, first and foremost, teach the basics, learning science-an interdisciplinary field that includes cognitive science, educational psychology, information science, and neuroscience-suggests that the best learning occurs when basic skills are taught in combination with complex thinking skills. Decades of research reveals that there is, in fact, no reason to separate the acquisition of learning core content and basic skills like reading and computation from more advanced analytical and thinking skills, even in the earliest grades."

Scott Marion from Center for Assessment responds:

This is a very good and important question.  We have to be concerned that as we continue to push for 21st century learning, we must make sure that we don't leave kids behind in 19th century learning.  What is missing from the question is the focus on curriculum and instruction.  Too often--and this might sound strange coming from an assessment professional--we act as if assessment will solve our learning problems when our history suggests that is not the case.  So, I'd like to end with a reminder that as we work on innovative technology-enabled assessments, we put as least as much effort, money, and time (if not more) into improving our learning systems.  In his response, Bill rightly chastised former Secretary Spellings' focus on basic skills, but the problem extends far beyond the walls of the "little red schoolhouse" to far too many classrooms that focus on a basics skills first mentality and it will take a tremendous amount of professional development to try to ensure that our instructional systems can keep pace with our assessment systems.