Ending Hit-and-Run Testing: ETS Sets Out to Revolutionize Assessment

Strange as it might sound, a big push to reinvent standardized tests is coming from a major standardized-testing company, ETS.

This ETS test item taps math skills by asking students to properly resize digital photos.

The Princeton, New Jersey, nonprofit organization,which produces the SAT and Advanced Placement exams, among others, is two years into a five- to ten-year project to create an accountability test that -- unlike the tests states use today -- measures complex, real-world skills and helpsteachers improve instruction.

"What we are trying to do is come up with tests that notonly measure discrete skills but also measure their integration," says ETS distinguished scientist Randy Bennett, "tests that exemplify not only the kinds of things that students must know and be able to do to succeed in thetwenty-first-century world but also the kinds of things that teachers want to teach."

The ETS vision is to create a far longer assessmentthan today's quick-hit exams, then break that assessment up into many parts that could be done in short sessions over the course of a whole school year. The added time would allow test makers to use open-ended tasks thatcall on multiple skills, and place the tasks in meaningful contexts. For example, one task being developed calls on studentsto show their knowledge of mathematicalproportion by resizing digital photos andexplaining why certain sizes will or won't work. If test makers get it right, Bennett says, the exam should be a learning experience in and of itself, not anendgame.

This ETS test item taps math skills by asking students to properly resize digital photos.

Amassing test results over time, rather than at a single sitting, would prevent fleeting disturbances such as an argument or a poorly air-conditioned room from skewing kids' final scores. It also would provide teachers with feedback on student progress throughout the year -- when they can actually use it -- giving a richer, more reliable picture of student skills.

The hope is that what ETS calls the Cognitively-Based Assessment Of, For, and As Learning, or something like it, could ultimately replace the worn-out exams now being used to satisfy the No Child Left Behind Act. It's an uphill battle it will take time, money, political will, and probably more advanced artificial intelligence systems to score written answers without breaking the bank.

But, as Bennett says, "I haven't heard anybody say, 'Don't try.'"

Grace Rubenstein is a senior producer at Edutopia.