The Way We Assess What Kids Are Learning Is Starting to Change

America’s K-12 education system often gets a bad rap. It is obsessed with standardized tests and accountability. Those tests mean what kids learn in classrooms is seriously focused on preparing for those tests and overweighting a student’s experience toward narrow content rather than engaging experiences. Employers and universities say kids leave high school unprepared with skills like communication and critical thinking needed to function and thrive in higher education and at work. Students themselves often feel unprepared for the world they face, which makes them anxious and unhappy.

At the core of many of these critiques is the architecture of learning. Kids are required to spend a certain amount of time in class every year (about 1000 hours of instruction per year, or some close variation of that). Time defines their learning more than whether they are actually learning. “Seat time is the rule,” says Timothy Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching and Learning. “Mastery or competence is not the rule.”

That is starting to change.

Earlier in 2023, the Carnegie Foundation teamed up with ETS, the nonprofit testing giant that writes and administers tests like the GRE, to start rebuilding those architectural foundations. First, they plan to dismantle something called the Carnegie Unit, which since 1906 dictated how schooling works by defining how much learning has to take place in a year, or to award a particular degree (for instance, the number of college credits to graduate is based on the Carnegie unit). Second, they will build a new suite of skills-based assessments to measure competencies and mindsets such as collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication or perseverance and empathy.

The implications of this shift are huge. Learning science—and common sense—has long established that kids learn everywhere, not just in school, and they acquire all sorts of skills and abilities that are hard to see because they are not measured in any valid, reliable, shareable, or understandable way. Many kids develop world-class time managements skills—the ability to manage a job, care for siblings and succeed without high-priced tutors or deep social networks. But those skills are not reflected in assessments to colleges or employers in meaningful ways and should be. Kids with access to lots of AP classes, and lots of AP tutors are rewarded while those with resilience and equal academic ability are overlooked.

“If we can build tools that see the unseen, that capture authentic representations of learning wherever it happens, the opportunity is to help propel and elevate, amplify millions more young people,” says Knowles.

To continue reading, see the full article published January 18, 2024 in Time.

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