Transition to Online Testing Sparks Concerns

When tens of millions of schoolchildren sit down at computers to take new common assessments in spring 2015, many of their peers will be taking similar tests the old-fashioned way, with paper and pencil, raising questions about the comparability of results -- as well as educational equity -- on an unprecedented scale.

Both state consortia that are designing tests for the Common Core State Standards are building computer-based assessments, but they will offer paper-and-pencil versions as well, as states transition fully to online testing. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium plans to run the two simultaneous "modes" of testing for three years. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, will do so for at least one year. In order to rely on the results, however, the consortia must show that the paper and computer modes of the tests in English/language arts and mathematics measure the same things. Thorny questions have arisen about whether children who take the paper-and-pencil version of the consortia tests will be at a disadvantage—or perhaps have an edge—compared with their peers who take the computer version. "You can't replicate the interactivity of the computer environment on paper," said one testing expert. "You need to build alternate forms of the test that measure the same standards [on paper]." The fact that paper-and-pencil tests might be more widely used in lower-income areas is something that officials at the Education Trust, which advocates school improvement for disadvantaged students, are keeping an eye on. But those potential questions of equity revolve more around the quality of the assessment—and the teaching that goes with it—than about the mode of the test, they say.