Assessments for Deeper Learning: What’s Next and What Will They Cost
From the publisher: “Successfully bringing deeper learning to scale will require a new generation of assessments that can measure higher-order thinking as well as real world skills. This article looks at where we’re at in the development of such assessments, and how much they are likely to cost.”
Written by a well-known education researcher, this article effectively states its purposes through both its title and a brief pull-out section on the first page. The author addresses those purposes effectively by presenting information from several research studies, although more than half of the cited resources are from the author’s own university or affiliations. The topic of assessment costs is a tricky one, and the author presents a wide range of estimated costs while addressing scoring costs as well. The author’s recommendations will not be particularly new to those who follow or implement assessment policy and may be overly broad. The article would be stronger if it addressed critical issues of validity and fairness. Unfortunately, little on validity issues has been released by the new assessment developers, which could be a major hurdle for the consortia and/or other state assessment developers. Communications quality in this article is excellent. The visuals support the text nicely, and the article is concise and well designed. Actual utility may be on the low side, especially given the general and familiar nature of the recommendations for policymakers.