I have a new piece out in Education Week that focuses on teacher-designed assessments. In it I argue that while teacher designed assessments can be more beneficial to student learning than commercially prepared assessments, teacher survey data suggests that most teachers don’t feel they have the appropriate skills to design high-quality assessments:

National teacher polling data suggest that I was not alone. A 2016 Gallup poll found that roughly 30 percent of teachers do not feel prepared to develop assessments. Less than 50 percent of teachers in low-income schools reported feeling “very prepared” to interpret assessment results, and less than 50 percent of teachers said they’d received training on how to talk with parents, fellow teachers, and students about assessment results. More alarming is that no state requires teachers to be certified in the basics of assessment development, so it’s likely that many teachers have never had any formal assessment training.

I highlight work underway in New Hampshire and Michigan to make significant investments in assessment literacy training for educators. More states should follow the lead of these exemplars and commit to equipping all educators with the tools to develop high-quality, rigorous assessments.
Read the full piece at Ed Week, and learn more about innovation in state assessment in “The State of Assessment: A Look Forward on Innovation in State Testing Systems,” a new report by my colleague Bonnie O’Keefe and me.