The Best of Both Worlds

The concept sounds so appealing: The Best of Both Worlds. You can enjoy the advantages of two different situations or opportunities at the same time.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

It’s the American Dream – a Party in the USA!

But is it really possible to have the best of both worlds?

And if it is possible, is it worth the price?

In my experience, seeking the best of both worlds has not always worked out as expected.

At the end of a grueling session during one of those weeklong summer planning meetings in the early days of the New England Common Assessment Program, we gathered for dinner at a local restaurant. It was a nice place, but nothing too fancy, appropriate for a state assessment contract. When the check arrived at the end of dinner, it seemed high for our party of ten, about 25% higher than the math folks at the table had estimated, so high that even the ELA folks could sense that something was amiss.

A quick review of the bill revealed that the culprit was the dinner ordered by one of the state assessment directors. Turns out that the Surf & Turf option he jumped at when the waiter recited the “daily specials” was actually called the The Best of Both Worlds and priced accordingly. To this day, that entrée still appears on the menu with the same name and the dreaded “MP” in the price column.

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During one of the many orientation meetings during my first week at college, the assistant dean told the group of commuting students assembled in the fancy Common Room how fortunate we were. We would be able to experience “the best of both worlds” – all that the college had to offer while enjoying the finer things in life outside of the ivy-covered walls (e.g., a private shower, interactions with real people).

One year later, the Freshman Dean made on-campus housing mandatory for all first-year students, citing a number of data-based reasons for his decision.

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Just a year ago, we were told that hybrid employment is the next great disruption. It’s the best of both worlds.

Now, companies are calling employees back to work amid concerns about communication, collaboration, and productivity (in no particular order). Downtown restaurants, bars, and small retails stores are closing due to the loss of business from remote and hybrid workers.

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Maybe we are flying too close to the sun if we think that we can have the best of both worlds.

However, upon further reflection….

If there is one thing that I learned from working at the Center for Assessment, it’s that there are tremendous benefits to flexible schedules and working from home or very close to it. (Pick whichever 90 hours you want to work this week! The choice is yours. Just kidding.)

And I loved my four years commuting in college – much more than the one year I eventually spent in dorm in graduate school. I met my wife, played in the band, earned a degree, and got to attend the taping of a Bob Hope Special, all while commuting. What more can you ask from the undergraduate experience?

Most importantly, not only did that state assessment director thoroughly enjoy his Surf & Turf dinner that night, but the rest of us savored watching him turn as red as a lobster from the prime ribbing we gave him at group dinners and budget meetings for the next ten years. Priceless.

So, let’s not be too quick to give up on the idea that we can figure out a way to have the best of both worlds in assessment and accountability.

After all, which is the Crazier proposition:

We can determine individual student proficiency on a complex set of content standards with a single, on-demand test administered somewhat near the end of the school year.

or

We can gather enough credible evidence about individual student proficiency to meet accountability needs from school-based assessment conducted throughout the year.

Go ahead. Take a minute to think about that and let the implications sink in.

The Best of Both Worlds – Assessment & Accountability

The best of both assessment and accountability worlds would be a situation in which information to support the instruction of individual students and meet the needs for school accountability could be derived from an assessment program with as few unnecessary redundancies as possible.

Technically, at opposite ends of the continuum, the two worlds on the table are:

1. State summative tests provide information to inform the instruction of individual students.
2. School-based tests provide the information needed for state accountability.

However, we now have decades of evidence to confirm that state summative assessment is not going to provide information to inform the instruction of individual students – at least not in the way that educators and most reasonable people interpret the statement “inform the instruction of individual students.”   Not gonna happen.

Yes, that outcome should have been obvious from the start, and we should have rejected outright the premise that state summative assessment could inform the instruction of individual students. But that’s water under the bridge.

We are left, therefore, with the second scenario. To achieve the best of both worlds, we need to be able to gather the information needed for school accountability from school-based assessment.

What would that look like?

We would need a system in place (i.e., curriculum, instruction, assessment) whereby teachers could determine the proficiency level of individual students. Well, that’s kind of their job.

And we would probably need a system in place to monitor and evaluate the accuracy of those judgments teachers are making about student proficiency. Hmm, I think that’s what school administrators are supposed to be doing. Plus, the monitoring of results across teachers/classrooms/schools is a fairly well-supported use of the interim assessments currently administered by many schools and districts.

 To be safe, we should probably add a layer of review and evaluation of inputs as well as student outcomes at the district level, especially for districts with more than one school building at the elementary, middle, or high school level. Are you starting to see where I am going with this?

 Piece of cake, right? Let’s eat it, too.

I am not naïve enough to think or suggest that all of this will work smoothly without any oversight from the state.

However, I am also not cynical enough to suggest that state oversight must be a stand-alone, standardized, summative test administered on-demand near the end of the year.

A short state test (maybe matrix-sampled across students, grades, and content areas) is an option for state oversight, to be sure, but we have to be willing to ask whether it is the only option or the best option?

More on this in a future post, but think of it this way:

• Administering an external common test may have been the best option available to ensure consistency of achievement standards across schools back in the 1800s.
• Constructing that test from selected-response items to take advantage of new advances in technology may have been the best option to ensure consistency of achievement standards across schools in the 1900s.
• I know that you are neither naïve nor cynical nor unimaginative enough to believe that either of those are the best and only options available to us a quarter of the way through the 2000s.  We can do so much better.

I have come to accept that the best of both worlds is not a perfect world.

It is likely not a world in which we are able to get all that each of the two (or more) worlds offers individually.

But we don’t want or need to have it all. We need enough from each world to meet our needs.

If we start from the bottom up this time (from the needs teachers, parents, and students) and play our cards right, there’s no reason why we can’t conceive of educational assessment in a way that maximizes and optimizes assessment to inform instruction while also providing sufficient information to meet the needs of school accountability.

Let me be clear that none of this means that we have to take a Wrecking Ball to standardized testing, scaled scores, and achievement levels. It does mean that it’s time for those of us in large-scale testing to acknowledge that the demand for assessment to provide information to inform instruction Can’t Be Tamed.

It’s not going to be easy.

But we gotta keep tryin’.
There’s always gonna be another mountain.
Always gonna be an uphill battle.

But when we get there, and we will get there,…

Won’t that be the best of both worlds?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay