Measurement-Driven Reform: Research on Policy, Practice, Repercussion

Demonstrating a top-down educational reform strategy and a belief that assessment can leverage educational change, the Arizona state legislature in 1990 passed Arizona Revised Statute 15-741. The legislation resulted in the Arizona Student Assessment Program (ASAP), a program that incorporated both standardized and performance-based assessments. Measurement-Driven Reform: Research on Policy, Practice, Repercussion reports on how ASAP was conceived, negotiated, and implemented. The CRESST researchers conducting the study, Audrey Noble and Mary Lee Smith, were critical of the policy process that created ASAP. ASAP “reveals both the ambiguities characteristic of the [assessment] policy-making process,” write Noble and Smith, “and the dysfunctional side effects that evolve from the policy’s disparities.” Employing multiple research methods, the researchers interviewed members of the policy-shaping community and examined documents and artifacts of the testing policy. Their analysis determined that competing ideas about student learning, teachers, curriculum, and assessment resulted in ineffective implementation of the assessment program. Five inconsistencies were reported: Policy makers’ definitions of “learning” were incoherent; Policy makers held dissonant expectations of teachers; Policy makers clashed regarding the role of curriculum; Policy makers alleged that a single performance assessment could fulfill the dual purposes of instructional improvement and accountability; The implementation plan of the Arizona Student Assessment Program was a dysfunctional side effect of a policy built on contradictory ideals. “Although ASAP appeals to many because of its ambiguity,” conclude Noble and Smith, “this same characteristic may undermine its capacity to effect any substantial change in educational practice.”