To test or not to test? - Many education reformers worry that students are over-tested. With the state departments of education giving grade-level and graduation tests, and the U.S. Department of Education giving tests in connection with "No Child Left Behind," enough may be enough!

There is a legitimate fear that more time is spent testing than teaching. Many districts find that these high-stakes tests are not a good match with their local curriculum and fail to represent what their students have and have not mastered. Even more frustrating is that the tests do not occur until the end of the year, and by the time the results get back for a given cohort of students, the year is over, and those students have moved on.  Many districts find themselves in need of local 'benchmark' assessments to more precisely determine their students' progress in terms of the local curriculum at strategic levels along the way.

In contrast to teacher-made tests, which are often unique to each teacher and are thus subjective in the way they are constructed, administered, and scored, the benchmark tests are more uniform and objective. They are validly constructed, administered under controlled conditions, and the results are objectively and statistically analyzed.  They are also designed to simulate the types of questions that students will see on high stakes tests!

Development

EdFOCUS offers assistance to districts who decide to implement benchmark assessments by helping them select or develop valid items that accurately measure student mastery of their adopted curriculum and the Power Indicators. We urge districts to include both traditional paper-pencil items and authentic or performance measures. The traditional items - typically multiple choice, extended response, and short answer - are included to parallel the high-stakes tests already required of students in state tests, NCLB tests, the PSAT, ACT, and so on. But performance or authentic assessments are also included to allow students to demonstrate more direct and holistic mastery of the curriculum. They are tasks that involve multiple standards and skills (at times across subject areas) and are designed to approximate real-life problem-solving.

The Compilation, Analysis and Interpretation of Results

EdFOCUS also provides districts with the technology applications and the training needed to assemble the results of individual student mastery of the district learning outcomes as well as the results of their benchmark assessments. More importantly, decision-makers are shown how to disaggregate their data according to gender, ethnicity, economic status, prior levels of achievement, and other variables that will help to identify specific trends and patterns. These data are also analyzed statistically to identify any factors that may correlate more and less strongly with particular achievement results.