CRPE Report on Effective Assessment During COVID-19 Includes Contributions from Turnaround

A new report by Robin Lake of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and Lynn Olson of FutureEd outlines steps districts and schools can take to approach testing and assessment this fall, following COVID19-related school closures.

The report summarizes the findings from a panel of experts including Turnaround for Children Founder and Senior Science Advisor, Pamela Cantor, M.D. The panel’s primary task was “to advise the field on the state of diagnostic testing: which types of assessment are best used for what purposes, and which produce more noise than good guidance.”

Lake and Olson recommended seven principles districts and schools could follow to ensure effective assessment as schools prepare to reopen in fall. Those principles include:

1. First, ask why—or why not—to assess
2. Do no harm
3. Take the first two or three weeks to focus on students’ physical and emotional well-being and to strengthen relationships as foundational to learning
4. Prioritize measures closest to classroom instruction to help teachers know what to do next
5. Use more formal, interim assessments for school and district decision-making
6. Engage parents as partners
7. Don’t use assessments for accountability unless they were designed and validated for that purpose

The consensus panel is part of the Evidence Project, “a new initiative that will advance solutions-oriented analysis of the K-12 response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Read the full report here.