Balanced Assessment: The Key to
Accountability and Improved Student
Learning

More and more, state and federal legislators and education policy makers are relying on multiple, large-scale standardized testing programs to measure student achievement and hold schools accountable for student progress.

The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which requires testing of every student in math and reading every year in grades three through eight, is the latest indication of a continued belief in the power of standardized testing to improve schools.

The problem is, standardized tests don't provide teachers with the day-to-day information they need to improve student performance.

Balanced Assessment: The Key to Accountability and Improved Student Learning (PDF, 479k, 23 pages), published by NEA, describes how large-scale testing can be used in conjunction with ongoing classroom assessment to produce a better picture of student achievement and school quality.

Classroom assessment is a range of methods—including direct observation, checklists, teacher-made tests, projects, portfolios and performances—that teachers use to determine student progress on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis in order to plan instruction and communicate with parents. Substantial research, summarized in Balanced Assessment, shows that unlike standardized tests, classroom assessment actually raises student achievement.

Balanced Assessment describes:

• The key building blocks of a balanced assessment system;
• What standardized testing can—and can't—tell us;
• How standardized testing and classroom assessment make different, but compatible, contributions to measures of student and school success;
• Why a balanced assessment system best meets the needs of parents, teachers, administrators, legislators and policy makers.

Creating balanced assessment systems requires considerable investment in teachers and their classroom assessment methods. According to the report, it should be a national, state, and local priority to match every dollar spent on standardized testing with another dollar devoted to classroom assessment. These additional resources should be used, for example, to:

• Provide current teachers with professional development in the best classroom assessment methods;
• Change teacher and administrator licensure requirements to include competency in classroom assessment;
• Ensure that teacher and administrator preparation programs turn out graduates who are assessment-literate.