Race To The Top: Funding for Common Assessments Poses Challenge

Near the end of a public meeting held here Thursday, the director of the Race to the Top Fund competition at the U.S. Department of Education, Joanne Weiss, asked a group of assessment experts to summarize their thoughts about how the federal agency could work to improve the country’s assessment systems.
“Good luck,” deadpanned Lauress Wise, a scientist for the Alexandria, Va.-based Human Resources Research Organization, a nonprofit evaluation group.
The remark drew laughter from the researchers, federal officials, state assessment directors, and test vendors in attendance. But it also underscored the challenges the department faces in spending $350 million in economic-stimulus money to aid consortia of states in developing common assessments in reading and mathematics.
Three common messages emerged from the testing experts convened for the first of three meetings being held to advise the federal officials on how to design the competition for those funds:
• State consortia should consider devising assessments to aid instructional practices, in addition to the annual accountability tests now required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
• Teachers must be much more involved in the development, use, and possibly even the scoring of assessments.
• The Education Department should seek to structure state consortia in such a way that the one-time infusion of cash will leverage sustained work.
Education Week