Questions for today's discussion

Welcome to today's discussion; State Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin, Co-Vice Chair, K-12 Issues of the Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education will join us today as a panelist, and panelists from earlier days will be joining in from time to time.

Again today, our format will be more free form than earlier in the dialogue. We will begin with a question on Assessment and Accountability that was posed late yesterday. I believe it deserves more discussion, given the heat of some earlier comments. We would also be happy to continue to hear more from you about what you see as the big issues surrounding the draft Master Plan! That question appears as the second section below.

About 10 AM (PDT) a question on Student Achievement and Progression will be posted, followed by one on Technology. As a wrapup, there will be discussion questions about how to implement the final version of the Plan, including developing the political will to take steps that have eluded policy-makers for many years, and the role of the public in this process.

I hope you can join us today, and look forward to hearing from you!

Rosemary Gunn
Information Renaissance

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Assessment and Accountabilty

During the online dialogue, many people have said that they find accountability in the educational system essential. However, a good bit of opposition has been voiced regarding the system of assessment that is now in use.

It seems difficult to combine these two positions. Assessment, if it is well done, should be a way to check how public schools, colleges, and universities are performing and how well education resources have been used, and to decide where future educational investments should go - in short, a way to help assure that students are being served and taxpayers are getting their money's worth. (See Background statement below.)

Question (A&A;): Can the state have an effective accountability system without assessment of students? If many parents opt out of having their children participate in testing, what impact will it have on this system? Would you say "reject statewide testing" - and if so, what alternatives can you suggest? Or would you say "keep the statewide testing program and improve it" - and if so, in what ways?

The Master Plan

Assuming that the Master Plan should cover the state-level activities that are essential to the education system in California:

Question (MP1a): What areas from the draft Plan would you like to see kept in the final version, and, importantly, what is missing? These might be general areas or specific points.

Question (MP1b): For the areas you see as essential to have in the Plan, who should be accountable for seeing that they are carried out properly?

Background on Assessment and Accountability 

The draft Master Plan places a high priority on students and their achievement, which in turn influences the allocation of education funding, assignments of responsibilities and authority, and the overall state accountability system at all levels. A key requirement of the accountability components is data on student achievement that includes sufficient detail to permit judgments to be made. The state testing program has two objectives: determine the extent to which students are learning what the academic standards say they should be taught, and determining how the achievement of California students compares to the achievement of students in other states. California is completing the development of standards-based testing to achieve the former objective. Norm-referenced, or standardized, tests have frequently been relied on to achieve the latter. Much opposition has been voiced to norm-referenced tests by teachers and parents alike but there is high public interest in knowing how California students fare compared to students in other states. There is little support for either more state mandated testing or reliance on a single test to make judgments on either student achievement or institutional performance; more data is needed on what does and doesn?t work well in promoting achievement among different student groups; and there is a need for data to support a rational approach to investing new resources in education beyond simple comparison with what other states spend per student.


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