Dear Friends and Colleagues,
If we are intent on ensuring young people thrive we must have reliable evidence of progress. With results on the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) plummeting to historic lows, assessment matters more than ever.
Certainly, there are valid critiques of some approaches to testing. Singular reliance on poorly constructed tests that grind schools to a halt for weeks at a time is not a path to deeper learning. And parents and educators have long worried that overzealous testing in some subjects undermines attention to others. But shunning reliable, comparable evidence altogether is a perilous path. There isn’t a sector in the world that doesn’t leverage good data to get better, and education should be no exception.
For Carnegie, this month marks an important moment in our efforts to establish more useful educational assessments for the nation. As some readers know, in April 2023, we partnered with ETS to create Skills for the Future. This month we will initiate the pilot phase of our work. We are partnered with five states—Indiana, Wisconsin, Nevada, Rhode Island, and North Carolina— to co-design and test new assessment tools focused on essential and in-demand durable skills, including communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.
Over time, we plan to build skill-progressions and assessments focused on a broader array of skills, such as digital literacy, creativity, curiosity, and perseverance. We expect each skill will be measured by “testless” assessments that capture authentic student work generated across academic disciplines—and through unique, tech-powered scenarios—that can be taken anywhere, anytime. We will pilot the tools both in and out of the classroom, assessing learning wherever it occurs. And importantly, none of the tools will bring learning to a halt for test administration.
Building the future of educational assessment won’t happen overnight. But by co-designing with those closest to students, prioritizing assessment for growth, leveraging extraordinary advancements in technology, and building insight systems that make evidence useful to students, families, and educators, we can create tools that are engaging and valid, provide real-time feedback, and scale effectively.
I want to extend my deep appreciation to our remarkable colleagues in Indiana, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin, for being on this journey with us. Like Carnegie, they believe that with better, more useful evidence in hand, we can equip millions more young people for success in postsecondary school, career and civic life.
In partnership,
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