Pitt to develop prototype student assessments

Elementary school children might soon take tests designed by Pitt professors — at their grade… Elementary school children might soon take tests designed by Pitt professors — at their grade level, of course.

The Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers awarded Pitt a $1.5 million contract to develop prototype student assessments and instructional tasks for the English language arts and literacy common core standards that most states have adopted in recent years.

Pitt’s Institute for Learning’s English Language Arts team, which is part of the University’s Learning Research and Development Center, and faculty and graduate students from the School of Education will develop the assessments for grades 3, 6 and 10.

PARCC is a consortium of states committed to creating “high-quality assessments that measure the full range of the Common Core State Standards,” according to the group’s website.

Nancy Israel, the executive director of the Institute for Learning, said that Pitt signed the contract with PARCC earlier this month. She said larger educational testing companies can also opt to use the model developed by Pitt.

“If you just leave it up to the testing companies, they may not come up with something different and new,” Israel said.

The assessments Pitt researchers develop will reflect the new Common State Standards Initiative, a state-led effort that defines what students are expected to learn in grades K-12 in order to be career and college-ready. In the past, each state had its own process for developing educational standards, but the Common State Standards Initiative would make the standards uniform across states.

So far, 45 states have adopted the standards. Pennsylvania adopted the standards in June 2010. The introduction of the Common State Standards has created a need for a change in the assessment model that tests students’ knowledge.

Laura Slover is the senior Vice President of Achieve, a nonprofit education reform organization, and the project management partner for PARCC. Slover said that PARCC is in need of prototype models that evaluate students’ understanding of common core standards, including hard-to-measure standards like “critical thinking and writing using evidence from sources.”

“The University of Pittsburgh was selected based on its expertise in this area,” she said in an email.

Anthony Petrosky, associate dean of academic programs in Pitt’s School of Education, is the principal investigator for the contract. Lindsay Matsumura, a faculty member in Pitt’s School of Education, will direct field-site testing with the help of two other members from IFL and LRDC.

Matsumura said that the team is just getting started with field testing, which will be conducted in schools across the nation.

She said that while the model is still in the works, it will be a more comprehensive assessment system not constrained to multiple choice questions. Matsumura said that the team is “trying to do more innovative performance-type tasks,” which may include things like more extended writing sections.

Israel said that the team will complete field testing by June and have reports on the testing, which will include interviews with teachers and students after the assessment is given, by November 2012.

“It’s exciting to be engaged, to be doing something that is so important in terms of educational policy,” Matsumura said.