Dive Brief:
- The Tennessee Department of Education’s latest testing contract with Minnesota-based vendor Questar Assessment is expected to cut the amount of time students spend taking state tests by 30% during the 2016-17 school year.
- The Tennessean reports the $60 million contract, finalized last week, eliminates the first spring testing window, cutting 200-225 minutes of testing for students in grades three through 11.
- Online assessments caused problems in Tennessee last year with its prior vendor, Measurement Inc., and Questar plans to make paper-and-pencil tests for the coming year with an online option for high schoolers if the testing platform can support it.
Dive Insight:
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act rewrite, which replaced No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act, allows states more flexibility in testing. They still have to assess students once per year in grades three through eight and at least once in high school, but how they do so could change very much. Seven states will be allowed into a pilot to revamp their testing programs entirely. Some are expected to develop new competency-based or performance-based tests, doing away with the high-stakes summative assessments that have caused so much turmoil in schools.
Even outside of the pilot, states don’t have to use original tests for high schools anymore. They can use the ACT or SAT, which students take to apply to college anyway. And when it comes to actual testing time, ESSA allows states to cap total test-taking time, forcing districts to limit how much time students spend proving their learning rather than actually learning.