Online Testing — Part 3: Immediate Results
Read other installments in our series on Online Testing.
- Online Testing — Part 1: A New Era for Hawaii Student Assessment
- Online Testing — Part 2: More Chances, Flexibility
- Online Testing — Part 3: Immediate Results
- Online Testing — Part 4: Test Will Be Tailored to Each Student’s Academic Abilities
- Online Testing — Part 5: More Accurate Results
- Online Testing — Part 6: Higher Achievement Standards
- Online Testing — Part 7: Higher Tech, Lower Cost
Hawaii’s new online assessment means not only better and more comprehensive results, but more immediate ones that can be put to use right away in the classroom.
Each time a student takes the test, the results will be reported instantly to a secure online reporting system accessible to teachers, principals, complex area superintendents — all the way up to Hawaii Department of Education Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi herself.
“The immediate results feature is a huge deal for the teachers,” said Cara Tanimura, director of the department’s Systems Accountability Office. “This way, they get to see if a student is proficient, and if not, provide additional instruction for them during the school year.”
In previous years, teachers have had to wait several months before seeing how their students performed on the Hawaii State Assessment. And because the results didn’t arrive until the summer, students had already graduated to the next grade — and some had moved on to middle or high school. The delay was due in large part to the complexity of handling, shipping and scoring the tens of thousands of paper booklets.
The former paper-and-pencil test also included some “constructive response” items — almost like short answer or essay questions — which required time-consuming human scoring. This contributed to the long delays in reporting assessment results and made it difficult for teachers and principals to use the scores effectively, Tanimura said.
The new online test doesn’t include those types of items, which she said are more appropriate as regular classroom assignments anyway.
And it means the software can now score the test in its entirety. Instantly. Which means two things:
Students get more than one attempt at taking the assessment during the year.
Educators can use the results as another tool to tell where their students are struggling and need further instruction — and in what subjects they are doing well and ready to dive deeper.
Many educators and critics have denounced too much focus on tests, because they say it distracts teachers from imparting real instruction. “Teaching to the test” is stigmatized in most education circles. But there may be real teaching potential for Hawaii’s online assessment. The immediate results may free teachers up to get outside the testing bubble once their students have passed the assessment — instead of working toward it all year with a sense of dread.
There will always be students who are ready to move on to new content before the year is over, said Jon Cohen, vice president for Washington, D.C.-based American Institutes for Research. AIR has developed the last two forms of the Hawaii State Assessment.
“But because you’re not getting any feedback on anybody until the end of the year, everybody gets the same content,” he said. “But if a kid can test out as proficient mid-year, you can do things that actually interest the kid and enrich them and move on to stuff for next year. Or you can take the stuff from this year and do it in greater detail and depth, and apply it in ways the students haven’t applied it before.”
