ERN Releases Statement on Assessment Guidance
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Feb. 23, 2021)— Education Reform Now (ERN) National President Shavar Jeffries released the following statement today in response to a letter from the U.S. Department of Education that makes clear that the Department will not issue blanket waivers for statewide, annual assessments this year.
“We commend the administration for upholding statewide annual assessments this spring to ensure that states, districts, schools, and especially families know how all students are performing academically. This information is especially critical given how the pandemic has interrupted learning and exacerbated longstanding opportunity gaps for students of color, students from low-income families, English learners, students with disabilities, and other historically underserved students.
The civil rights community has long supported annual assessments because we need comparable, reliable data about student learning to ensure that all students—particularly historically underserved students—are held to the same high academic standards and that education leaders and communities can make data-driven decisions for recovery. This year information from these assessments will help states and districts direct resources equitably to the districts, schools, and students most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given that many states will require some type of flexibility due to the constraints of the pandemic, the Department should work with states to provide flexibilities to assessment administration protocols and accountability policy as needed for this unique time—while maintaining the statewide, comparable, disaggregated data required by ESSA—and should provide additional oversight, monitoring, guidance and technical assistance to ensure states can safely and reliably collect the type of data needed to inform recovery.
In this context, we realize that some states this year will not be able to assess all students using a statewide instrument and that stakeholders may need to consult other available data points—as long as they are reliable and valid—to inform what kinds of additional supports and resources schools and students may need. In these considerations, the Department, and other stakeholders, must keep in mind that local academic assessments are not comparable to statewide annual assessments: they are likely not aligned to state academic standards; do not provide federally required adaptations and accommodations for English Learners and students with disabilities; and cannot be reliably compared against one another—key components of assessments under ESSA.
The Department should also make clear the flexibilities being offered this school year are only temporary and that states are expected to return to assessing all students statewide on the same summative assessment at the end of the next (2021-22) school year in accordance with current ESSA plans.”
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