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COVID-19 hasn’t stopped teachers and students from engaging in powerful teaching and learning. As schools shifted to distance learning in the closing months of the 2019–20 school year, course adaptions created opportunities for students to make new discoveries about themselves and topics of interest. Through authentic projects and presentations of learning, students have demonstrated that they remain hungry for and capable of doing rigorous, meaningful work.
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Educators with the Hawaiian-focused charter schools have adapted their practices, grounded in Hawaiian culture and students’ relationship and responsibility to natural environments, to the constraints brought on by COVID-19. While nothing can replace the ocean voyages, agricultural work, and community service activities that are central elements of their “typical” school year, staff have developed new virtual ʻāina-based (land-based) activities and assessments to respond to the new reality of distance learning.
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Early data from a unique college admissions pilot program at City University of New York (CUNY) provide promising evidence on how colleges can expand admissions, better determine which students are likely to thrive, and potentially increase equity.
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All students benefit from opportunities to reflect on their learning and work. Around the country, schools are adopting portfolios, showcases, and other forms of performance assessment to help students build essential metacognitive skills. Given the disruption caused by COVID-19, these strategies can also be an effective way to bring closure and add meaning to a tumultuous school year.
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Students applying to some New England colleges and universities have seen a new option on their application forms allowing them to submit performance assessment artifacts. The option is made possible through a national initiative, Reimagining College Access (RCA), that brings together more than 100 education organizations, k-12 school systems, and colleges and universities.
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Teachers and district leaders are leveraging performance assessments to provide students with opportunities to explore interests and issues of their own choosing as they show what they know and are able to do. These authentic assessments create structures and processes for students to bring their full selves to the learning, creating culturally relevant and context-rich projects that can also address community concerns.
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Historically, U.S. schools have been rated based largely on student performance on an annual summative test. With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state accountability systems now feature additional measures of student and school success, including academic growth. These factors are critical if we are to create accountability systems that recognize the contributions that schools make to student progress, while reducing bias against educators and schools serving students in diverse, high-poverty communities.
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Access to deeper learning—classes in which students are engaged to think deeply and develop the skills and abilities they’ll need for college and work—is a central equity issue for our time, says Dr. Pedro Noguera in this LPI Blog. In this interview, Noguera discusses the role of deeper learning in providing all students with an equitable and empowering education and what it will take to “scale up” deeper learning practices.
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As states, districts, and schools are expanding instruction to include the competencies associated with college, career, and civic readiness, they are also developing ways to measure mastery of these deeper learning and higher-order thinking skills. These measures include performance assessments, such as portfolios, capstone projects, and senior defenses, alongside classroom performance. A new report looks at how these assessments are being used to inform college admission, placement, and advising decisions.
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This brief describes performance assessments and their value for guiding and evaluating high school students' learning, as well as informing colleges and universities about what students know and can do. It explores state and local policies that support the use of such assessments, along with emerging higher education efforts to incorporate them in college admission, placement, and advising. It discusses steps that can help ensure that performance assessments are high-quality, rigorous, and well understood and that can facilitate the use of these assessments in higher education decisions.
