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Congressman Tom Petri said Monday that he is enthusiastic about the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's (DPI) plans to change a 17-year-old statewide test used to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. State Superintendent Tony Evers announced last week that the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE) will be phased out as new assessments at the elementary and middle school levels are developed, which likely will be taken on computers, allowing for immediate and detailed information about individual students' progress.
"The fly in the ointment is that, in terms of satisfying the requirements of No Child Left Behind, the federal Education Department insists on unreasonable restrictions against using the most effective computerized tests," said Petri. "In January, I introduced H.R. 655, the Assessment Accuracy and Improvement Act, to fix the problem."
Petri favors "adaptive" testing. With adaptive tests taken on computers, the questions are adjusted to zero in on the student's level of competence. If a student answers a question correctly, the test then presents a question of increased difficulty. If the student answers incorrectly, the next question will be easier.
"With current testing on paper, you pretty much learn whether or not a student is mastering the material at the proper grade level. But with adaptive testing, you can find out how much ahead or behind the student is, which areas he or she is particularly strong or weak in, and by how much. And the results are instantly available," Petri said.
Currently, when fulfilling NCLB requirements, the U.S. Education Department will accept adaptive tests only when they test solely within the student's grade level. Petri's bill would allow tests to ask questions appropriate to other grade levels if the student taking the test is proving to be sufficiently ahead or behind of his or her grade's requirements.
Even though the most effective adaptive tests do not satisfy NCLB requirements, school districts nationally, and nearly a third of schools in Petri's congressional district, are already "speaking with their wallets" by spending scarce resources to use adaptive tests, such as the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) developed by the non-profit Northwest Evaluation Association, because they provide valuable information that the federally mandated assessment does not. Educators report that the immediate, personalized results are valuable in motivating and engaging students to do better.
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