Quyen Arana gave a very thoughtful comment on a post from last Friday "New College Board Test Receives Unfounded, Transparent Objections".

Testing is a two-edged sword. NCLB has moved mountains with regards to gaining a pulse on the American classroom, something we've never been able to do previously, but in it's wake it has reaped havoc on many school systems in their desperation to have students pass the test. Rather than focus on learning, schools spend the final months of the year doing test prep, hoping enough students will pass to keep the federal hounds at bay. It's time we help schools learn what to do with the new found data on student achievement, and apply processes and create structures that bring innovative educational changes to the classroom, rather than hyping yet another national benchmark. Most schools already know they need to improve. But like many businesses reeling in the financial crisis, schools are finding it difficult to know how to change course. Learning is mired in a 500 year old paradigm of books and lectures. Classrooms look as they did 200 years ago. It is difficult to inspire and engage a young citizenry that has grown into a digital revolution. Schools need organizational help, not more assessments.

We greatly appreciate the input, however the issues cited have less to do with testing and assessments and more to do with existing inadequacies in the education pipeline and with the quality of the actual tests. Most state assessments are of the "bubble" multiple choice variety. These tests fail to gauge how well we teach our students to critically analyze information and problem solve - two major keys to college and career readiness. This also has the result of "teaching to the test" rather than educating students. The NAEP and PISA exams have extended response sections to truly measure a student's command of the material rather than memorization of it. With regards to the general pipeline, teachers are often forced to rush through material because students don't come into the class prepared, and unless the parents, teachers and students know where the problems lie, that scenario is unavoidable. This ReadiStep exam is designed to help alleviate those issues by diagnosing a student's needs before they advance into more rigorous material.

While I do agree that schools need better preparation for using assessment data in their classroom implementation, this is in no way mutually exclusive with testing. Exactly the opposite is true - we need to continue collecting data in order to learn which approaches work and which do not.

The last thing I'd like to re-emphasize is that this ReadiStep exam is low stakes and voluntary, meaning no one should be teaching to this test. In that regard, this is an opportunity to provide information that is somewhat unbiased by test prep or performance anxiety, and as such, it can give a more "honest" diagnosis of where a student is in their education.  As I've said before - if you don't know where a student is, how can you possibly help them get where they need to be?