WASHINGTON – The latest incursion of technology into classrooms will hit in the fall when some schools start using online assessment systems to track student progress in meeting the new common care standards.
In spring, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, two groups that aim to create a set of assessments for K-12 students that will help prepare them for college and careers, will have trial runs of their new online assessment system slated to go into schools in the 2014-2015 school year. The system will track student performance in meeting new common core standards.
The standards lay out what children should know in English and mathematics as they advance through elementary, middle and high school. Created in 2009 by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the common core standards were developed by teachers, parents and community leaders, according to the common core website. The Obama administration has endorsed them, and 45 states plus D.C. have adopted them.
However, many experts criticize high-stakes testing as a means of measuring college readiness. Others say the standards are too tough. In New York City, when common core was implemented, proficiency in math dropped from 60 percent in 2012 to 29.6 percent in 2013. Proficiency in English dropped from 46.9 percent to 26.4 percent.
Education Network for America and the Consortium for School Networking, two groups that create technology for K-12 schools, held a webinar Tuesday to help prepare school administrators, teachers and students for the implementation of the new assessment systems.
“[Online assessments] allows us to move our school districts into the 21st century… and build the classrooms our children need today,” Tom Ryan, CEO of eLearn Institute, a company that uses technology to transform education, said Tuesday in the webinar.
According to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the field test will set preliminary achievement standards for the upcoming school year and will help teachers and administrators prepare for the implementation of the assessments next year.
There will be two types of test: practice test and training test. Practice test will give teachers, parents and students an idea of what is expected of the student at their grade level. Training test will give students experience of the interactions they will have on the test.
A big part of online assessments is the ability to tailor students’ curriculum to their needs.
Ryan said online testing allows for more timely feedback, more customization in terms of student instruction and a reduced burden of grading by hand.
“[Online assessment] increases the time instructors have to work with students and provide corrective action with students who are having trouble with their learning accuracies,” Ryan said.
The assessments will take advantage of the increasing presence of technology in schools across the country. John Keller, director of Instructional Technology and eLearning in Warren Township, Ind., announced that starting in the 2014-2015 school year textbooks will be replaced by a digital curriculum.
President Barack Obama has been working with tech companies and recently pledged more than $750 million for student technology through contributions from tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft.
