In my last post, I used cursory examinations of what some states were doing around through-year assessments to make statements about whether they were curriculum-agnostic or curriculum-specific. I see curriculum-specific, or curriculum-anchored, through-year assessments as a significant innovation in assessment and, from my perspective, the more curriculum-specific the better.

This is an important innovation because we need to give teachers, caregivers, and students the information they need to make data-informed decisions that maximize each student’s academic achievement. The data available from today’s statewide accountability assessments is a start, but also entirely inadequate.

With more than 20 states exploring some form of innovation in their accountability assessment programs, I want to use this post to explore the through-year assessment projects of Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. I went to the online resources for each state’s program, and here’s what I found.

Georgia

Unfortunately, the push in Georgia to develop through-year assessments failed to yield an alternative to the Georgia Milestone Assessments. In February 2023 the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) sent a letter to the United States Department of Education (USED) that they were withdrawing from the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA), the federal program providing funds to support GaDOE’s innovation efforts.

The GaDOE was using the IADA funds to support the work of two consortia, each working on its own version of a through-year assessment system.

The Georgia MAP Assessment Partnership was a collaboration between school districts and NWEA. Together, they looked to build “a through-year assessment that leverages adaptive interim assessments to provide timely insights on students’ command of grade-level standards, measure academic growth, provide norm-referenced test results, and produce summative proficiency scores” (GaDOE, 2023).

The Putnam Consortium worked with Pearson Assessments to develop Navvy, “an on-demand system that leverages cutting-edge data science to provide real-time diagnostic data” (GaDOE, 2023). Navvy allowed teachers to administer standards-level assessments at any time during the school year. “Each standard includes approximately 8 questions and students can be retested on each standard up to two additional times after the initial administration” (GaDOE, 2023).

Both consortia were behind schedule heading into the 2022-2023 school year and were facing issues with program implementation, partnering with their vendors, and with the IADA rules from the USED. In November 2022, the USED sent a letter to the GaDOE expressing concern over “the lack of progress by both GMAP and the Putnam Consortium” (GaDOE, 2023, quoting the USED). That led to the GaDOE’s decision to withdraw from the IADA.

The issues of the two consortia would eventually be chronicled in two reports, one written by the GaDOE and the other by WestEd, who was tasked with providing technical support to both consortia. These reports tell the story of how the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic were unable to be reconciled with the inflexibility of the USED’s rules for participation in the IADA.

For example, the GaDOE report captures a key implementation issue being faced by the two consortia.

The first issue is preserving the formative nature of the through-year assessments when reappropriating them for summative uses…[R]epurposing these formative assessments for statewide accountability uses would subject them to additional legal, technical, and practical requirements that conflict with their original intent.

(GaDOE, 2023)

The WestEd report captures one of the more important areas where the USED’s inflexibility was causing obstacles for the two consortia.

[S]tudents in the pilot districts were required to take both the pilot assessment and Georgia Milestones assessments until the district could show that the innovative assessments produced comparable results to the Georgia Milestone Assessments.

(Perie, Clarke, & Lemke, 2023)

The WestEd report also described how the vendor partners working with the two consortia failed to support them through the end of the project. They talked about staff turnover and about acquisition activity as specific issues that limited the progress and success of the two consortia.

The USED recently announced that they are reinvigorating the IADA program. They are seeking additional states to identify innovative assessment ideas and apply to the program. In late November 2023, the USED informed State Education Chiefs of six clarifications and process improvements. The USED is:

1. Lifting the cap on States that can participate in IADA;
2. Clarifying methods States can use to demonstrate compatibility;
3. Clarifying IADA timelines, including planning periods, standardized review windows for State applications, and extension and waiver options;
4. Recognizing the importance of funding opportunities that support IADA work;
5. Emphasizing educator and family engagement and clarifying the role of external partners; and
6. Inviting all interested experts, particularly those with expertise in innovative assessment, to apply to serve as assessment peer reviewers.

(Cardona, 2023)

Louisiana

The story of Louisiana’s decision to participate in IADA starts with their work to revamp their ELA curriculum. Once they had a strong sense of their new curriculum, known as ELA Guidebooks, they began to evaluate the alignment between their state assessment system and their new curriculum. This work led them to see “a challenge with the focus in state ELA assessments on measuring specific skills, such as summarizing passages and locating main ideas, without assessing whether students have developed a base of knowledge” (NWEA, 2021). To overcome this challenge, the State began to build an innovative assessment that aligned with their core beliefs about ELA.

• Equity: Assessments should allow all students the opportunity to demonstrate what they know and can do.
• Opportunity:All students deserve access to complex texts and tasks.
• Alignment: Assessments should support high-quality instruction.
• Knowledge: To become literate, students must build knowledge through coherent courses of study.

(NWEA, 2021)

The resulting through-year assessment system for ELA Grades 5-8 are called the LEAP ELA Guidebooks Innovative Assessment Program (IAP). According to their 2023-2024 Assessment Guide, this assessment system centers around end-of-unit tests administered during three windows (Fall, Winter, and Spring). Each test follows an instructional unit from the ELA Guidebooks curriculum. This thematic alignment between curriculum and assessment facilitates the implementation of the following structure for each end-of-unit test.

• Section 1 starts by asking questions about the texts the students read in class. Then, the students read one or two new texts that relate to the unit of study. The students then answer questions that relate both to the texts from the unit and the texts provided in the assessment.
• Section 2 presents students with a single writing prompt which requires them to draw upon everything they’ve read during the unit and in Section 1 of the test.
• Section 3 asks students to read one or two passages and answer questions associated with the text(s). This section asks students to demonstrate their ability to comprehend grade-level tests.

This assessment design, by far, comes closest to implementing a curriculum-anchored assessment. The test draws directly from the texts used during instruction and builds upon them by introducing a couple of new, related texts. The test also evaluates the reading comprehension of students as they encounter new content. Frankly, I applaud their approach and look forward to seeing the results of their efforts.

However, to implement this approach, Louisiana had to limit the scope of implementation (at least for now). To date, they have implemented this approach for a limited number of grades (5-8) in one content area (ELA). If a school district decides not to follow the ELA Guidebooks curriculum, their participation in the IAP would be of little value.

North Carolina

Since 2019 the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has been working on development and implementation of the North Carolina Personalized Assessment Tool (NCPAT). The NCPAT is a comprehensive assessment system built from multiple interim measures leading toward an end-of-year summative test. The interim tests, known as NC Check-Ins 2.0, contribute data used to select from one of multiple fixed-form summative tests. Each form of the summative test targets a portion of the student ability spectrum. However, the interim tests do not directly contribute to a student’s summative score. 

The NC Check-Ins 2.0 serve a similar purpose to the first stage of a stage-adaptive test. The data collected from these tests, as the first stage, contributes to the selection of the summative test, as the second stage. This innovation allows the NCPAT to provide “a more precise estimate of a student’s performance” (Brandt, 2023).

The NCDPI has made significant progress developing and implementing the NCPAT. They delayed implementation by one year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they plan on administering the NCPAT statewide, in ELA and Math at Grades 3-8, during the 2024-2025 school year. Part of their success was a staggered development and implementation schedule. They started with Grades 4 and 7 in 2021-2022, expanded to include Grades 5 and 8 in 2022-2023, and will include Grades 3 and 6 in 2023-2024.

The NCPAT does not fulfill the definition of a curriculum-anchored through-year assessment. The North Carolina legislature wrote a law requiring the development of a through-year assessment. An external review of the NCPAT notes that the program isn’t a through-year assessment.

According to North Carolina Senate Bill 621, the original intended purpose of a new innovative assessment was to administer state-mandated assessments “in multiple short testing events throughout the school year rather than in a single long testing event at the end of the year.” Although the current assessment does not adhere to the original state legislated “through-year” requirement, the NCPAT design reflects numerous stakeholder voices, prioritizes instructional utility, and addresses other legislative requirements that would have been violated with a traditional through-year design (e.g., NCSCOS).

(Brandt, 2023)

There are elements of the design that I find appealing. I like that performance on the NC Check-Ins 2.0 is used to inform the summative tests the students take. A stage-adaptive test design is easier to implement than a computer-adaptive design because a stage-adaptive test requires fewer items. This decreases costs for implementation, making it a realistic yet often overlooked choice for a statewide summative test. 

In conclusion

Currently, I have found only one state (Louisiana) that is building a program that fits the definition of a curriculum-anchored through-year assessment. To implement such a program, they limited testing to Grades 5-8 ELA. They also facilitated the construction of the curriculum, ELA Guidebooks, to which the assessments are anchored. They were able to accomplish laudable goal, whereas other states have had to abandon similar efforts.

As we move through the winter and into the spring of 2024, I have two hopes.

First, I hope that the data generated from the Louisiana project allows them to implement, and expand, the LEAP ELA Guidebooks Innovative Assessment Program. From my research they are the furthest along in implementing a curriculum-anchored through-year assessment. As the “first up,” the assessment community will be watching their progress closely. (I, for one, wish them all the best.)

Second, I hope that the re-opening of the Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority will allow more states to implement curriculum-anchored through-year assessments.  The USED announced during a December 2023 webinar that states could enter the Planning Phase of IADA at any time (USED, 2023). So, there is no pressure for states to enter the program before they are ready. And, once they begin the process, the increased flexibility should allow them a greater chance of success.

I see curriculum-anchored through-year assessments as a potentially effective way to increase the amount of high-quality data we provide teachers and school leaders. This data will help them make informed decisions that improve the academic performance of every student. Implementation, to date, has been slow. However, I am optimistic that there is an opportunity to implement this model in more places. I look forward to seeing who applies for IADA in the coming months (and years).

References

Brandt, C. (2023). Evaluation of North Carolina’s Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA): The North Carolina Personalized Assessment Tool (NCPAT). National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment.

Cardona, M. (2023, November 20). Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority. https://oese.ed.gov/files/2023/11/23-0431-DCL-IADA-os-approved-11.17.2023.pdf

Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE). (2023). Georgia’s Innovative Assessment Pilot update: Final report. https://lor2.gadoe.org/gadoe/file/226e3c71-bb66-41b2-9b7c-05cdf0660eb8/1/Georgia-IADA-Annual-Report-2022-2023.pdf

Louisiana Department of Education. (2023). 2023-2024 IAP Assessment Guide for Grades 5-8 ELA Guidebooks Operational Tests. https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/assessment-guidance/leap-ela-guidebooks-iap-operational-assessment-guide—grades-5-6-7-8.pdf?sfvrsn=c4a6018_2

NWEA. (2021). Louisiana and NWEA: Creating innovative assessments to foster equity and deeper learning. https://www.nwea.org/resource-center/white-paper/47609/Louisiana-IADA-Brief_NWEA_whitepaper-1.pdf/

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI). (2023). North Carolina Personalized Assessment Tool frequently asked questions. https://www.dpi.nc.gov/documents/accountability/testing/eog/north-carolina-personalized-assessment-tool-frequently-asked-questions

Perie, M., Clarke, M., & Lemke, M. (2023). Georgia Innovative Assessment Pilot Program: Technical assistance annual report. WestEd. https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Assessment/Documents/Flexibility/GA_IAPP_Annual_Report_June_2023_Final.pdf

United States Department of Education (USED).(2023). Next steps for the Innovation Assessment Demonstration Authority: A conversation with states.  https://oese.ed.gov/files/2023/12/Next-Steps-for-the-Innovative-Assessment-Demonstration-Authority-A-Conversation-with-States-1.pdf