Online Testing — Part 1: A New Era for Hawaii Student Assessment

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Reading time: 5 minutes.

Read other installments in our series on Online Testing.

The new online Hawaii State Assessment is about more than just taking the same old test on a computer.

It’s going to change the entire school experience for teachers and students.

Students will be given more opportunities to pass the proficiency tests without disrupting their regular class schedule. Teacher will get more feedback — and instantly — to help them guide their students through the year. And the state will save money — almost $6 million per year.

The change is hard upon us. Students could be taking the new tests as soon as Oct. 18, pending Hawaii State Board of Education approval of the new proficiency benchmarks at its next meeting Oct. 7

An annual state assessment is required by the federal government, but the traditional paper-and-pencil test is costly and not that helpful to teachers. The idea of going online emerged in 2008 when the Hawaii Department of Education was looking for savings in the face of the budget crisis. Systems Accountability Office director Cara Tanimura advised former superintendent Patricia Hamamoto that they needed to find a more affordable way to administer the state assessment.

But the department discovered that online testing has far more benefits than just meeting the accountability standards of the federal law, which requires every state to administer its own annual student assessment. The assessment results are critical because they dictate which schools are in “good standing” with federal standards and which need to undergo various levels of intervention and restructuring.

“We had been talking about ways to improve the test — and improving it both for the students and teachers,” Tanimura said. “Making it more real-time, while being mindful of budget shortfalls. We wanted to be fiscally responsible, and at the same time comply with federal and state law.”

The online test will cut Hawaii’s annual assessment costs almost in half over the next three years — from just under $11 million in the 2010-11 school year to about $5.5 million in 2012-13. An added incentive for the transition was the capability of online testing to provide teachers with instant and more accurate results. Tanimura said an online exam would be more relevant for students growing up in the digital era, too.

Already, 23 out of 27 states by market research company were in some stage of developing an online test. But as of of 2008, Oregon was employing a model of online testing, meaning tests that are tailored to students’ abilities.

Hawaii’s computer-adaptive test was developed by — the same contractor that developed Oregon’s.1 More states will likely move to a computer-adaptive assessment model in the next few years. A consortium of 31 states, including Hawaii, just received $160 million from the federal government to develop a nationally standardized computer-adaptive test that will align with , which Hawaii just adopted.

The new online assessment will improve on the paper-and-pencil test in several ways. So many, in fact, that we broke each improvement off into its own short article for easier reading. We’ll publish them in a series over the next few days.

  • Increased flexibility, more opportunities to take the test and less time spent. In previous years, all schools were required to administer the paper-and-pencil test one time within the same two- or three-week period in the spring, disrupting the regular schedule. The new test can be incorporated directly into the regular classroom schedule almost anytime during the year.

  • Immediate results. Previously teachers and principals had to wait until several weeks after school is out for the summer before they knew whether their students learned that year’s material. Now teachers will be able to hone in on their students’ unique needs during the school year.

  • Tests tailored to each student’s academic abilities. Before, all students in one grade received the same static set of questions. The online adaptive test is designed to draw from a bank of more then 10,000 unique test items and challenge students equally based on their abilities. Ideally, every student will correctly answer about half the questions on the new test.

  • Increased accuracy of results. The new test is engineered to provide more detailed and accurate information about students and make it more accessible to teachers.

  • Higher achievement standards. The standard-setting committees have raised the minimum number of correct answers required to score proficient on the state assessment. The Hawaii State Board of Education will review the new cut scores and is expected to vote on them on Oct. 7.

  • Reduced costs for the Hawaii Department of Education. Schools used to administer the state assessment in booklet form, and every school was also required to administer separate quarterly assessments. Online testing eliminates the need for paper booklets and additional tests.

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