Benefit to low-stakes testing?

Although only briefly mentioned in the Connecticut case I thought the idea of a low-stakes testing approach was a genius idea! A low-stakes testing approach certainly takes the fear out of a failing report and allows for improved analysis of the data to understand the strands, or standards in this case, which were low or high. This allows districts to better facilitate and improve those areas which are lower than one would like to see.

I know that our district has been working for the last three years a breaking down our overall testing results from the state into strands. In our case, the big picture results provided by the state did not aid our small district in evaluating our progress. For example, we knew that our math and reading results were low at the high school, but what specific strands/standards were low. By taking our, what I would consider, high-stakes test results and breaking them down the staff was able to see that our high school reading results were actually just low in the strand area of vocabulary. This allowed us to enhance our teaching strategies to better facilitate student learning in this area. Does our strand data analysis work? Thus far in our district we have seen gains, some smaller than others, as we evaluate and continue to compile the data for our classes – or cohorts as we refer to them.

Along with testing and developing a low-stakes test, as in the Connecticut case, the format of the test was modified to included constructed response and performance assessments that measure authentically and reflect challenging learning goals. This is really what we want to measure, can the student solve problems which involve multiple steps and provide an answer that explains the understanding of the content/standards. We want students to be able to take the skills that they learn and apply them to a problem and come up with a solution.