The U.S. K-12 public education system continues to lag in both adoption of technology and related innovation as well as in leveraging technology and digital resources through interoperability standards. The two are closely connected: technology standards provide a base for cost-effective, value-added innovation; but if carried too far or adopted too early, such technical standardization can also inhibit desired innovation and competition.
Their appropriate balance is therefore critical to advancing both important goals. The challenges in finding this delicate equilibrium point are being tested (pun intended) now as the U.S. Department of Education and its two Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) grantee consortia — SBAC and PARCC – consider the scope and form of their deliverables and technology (interoperability) standards.
The $350 million RTTA initiative promises to bring important technology-enabled innovation to assessment — including many long available but not often implemented by states — through the online delivery of more robust (i.e., comprehensive, authentic, timely and adaptive) measurement of student knowledge and skills to inform teaching, learning and accountability. Leveraging this innovation will require changes to teaching and learning, technology investment, interoperability development and adoption, and limits on the scope of RTTA development.
In response to an important RFI by the Department regarding the technology standards to be employed by the RTTA consortia, SIIA supported the requirement that RTTA grantees “maximize the interoperability of assessments across technology platforms and the ability for States to switch their assessments from one technology platform to another.” RTTA could provide the tipping point to K-12 education’s adoption of data and content interoperability standards (see SIIA Primer) that would, for example, enable and maximize our ability to personalize learning.
But these benefits will only be realized if interoperability is properly implemented, and if standardization is balanced with innovation. SIIA’s recommendations to USED (and the RTTA consortia) elaborated on both points.
First, SIIA raised questions about the scope of the consortia’s work. For example, SBAC intends to develop a comprehensive platform of dynamic resources for teachers, administrators, students, and parents, including a system portal and educator dashboard with curricula, interventions and professional development. But SIIA urges the RTTA consortia to focus resources on their core task to develop summative tests and test items, as well as on the interoperability specification for defining assessment types/data, as required under the terms of the funding competition.
RTTA resources should NOT be diverted to the development of turnkey assessment systems and value-added learning platforms and resources. This focused strategy will best leverage limited RTTA resources on their core mission, recognize and retain the value of varied local instructional technologies, and catalyze innovation of value-added educational technologies.
SIIA is concerned that control by a single entity (or even two) of the assessment content, data and delivery platform (even if open technologies) could lock out, or at least discourage, alternative and related technologies and innovations, as well as then limit the choices of state and local education officials. Just as Common Core standards should not imply a single curriculum or set of instructional resources and technologies, neither should the assessments.
Second, with regard to the interoperability standards, SIIA recommends the RTTA consortia focus on the technical standards necessary for the migration of test items and student test data across applications and platforms. The further the USED and RTTA consortia get from assessment item interoperability, the more complex the considerations and the more flexibility is appropriate.
For example, standards should not specify in any limiting way a universal methodology for sequencing assessment items, which could undermine rapid developments in the underlying learning sciences, instructional technologies and practices. And interoperability standards must be dynamic enough to support delivery on a wide range of devices and platforms. The standards should focus on what is being transmitted, and less on how. In short, RTTA technology standards decisions should have a key goal of fostering innovation and choice.
Interestingly, while the Department’s RFI suggests a thoughtful and comprehensive consideration of interoperability standards with regard to RTTA, the Obama Administration apparently bypassed such efforts with regard to the recently announced initial $500 million (of a total $2 billion over 4 years) U.S. Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program, which requires that grantees develop content and courses that, for better or worse, meet SCORM standards. [February, 2011 Update: In response to concerns, DoLabor has adjusted the requirement to allow for other interoperability standards as well.]
RTTA promises to drive improvement in assessment, but that will not fully translate to driving innovation in teaching and learning (and the related technologies) unless the assessments themselves are unbundled from their management and delivery. Adoption of test item and student test data interoperability may fall short of driving that innovation if RTTA comprehensive delivery platforms become the default instructional management system used by state and local agencies.
While tight budgets and common learning standards may tempt education decision makers to standardize instructional technologies, the better long-range course is to instead leverage a minimal set of technology (interoperability) standards to drive the ongoing innovations that students and educators will need moving forward.