If assessments are diagnoses, what are the prescriptions?

I happen to like statistics. I appreciate qualitative observations, too– data of all sorts can be deeply illuminating. But I also believe that the most important part of interpreting them is understanding what they do and don’t measure. And in terms of policy, it’s important to consider what one will do with the data once collected, organized, analyzed, and interpreted. What do the data tell us that we didn’t know before? Now that we have this knowledge, how will we apply it to achieve the desired change?

In an eloquent, impassioned open letter to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and other billionaires pouring investments into business-driven education reforms (revised version at Washington Post), elementary teacher and literacy coach Peggy Robertson argues that all these standardized tests don’t give her more information than what she already knew from observing her students directly. She also argues that the money that would go toward administering all these tests would be better spent on basic resources such as stocking school libraries with books for the students and reducing poverty.

She doesn’t go so far as to question the current most-talked-about proposals for using those test data: performance-based pay, tenure, and firing decisions. But I will. I can think of a much more immediate and important use for the streams of data many are proposing on educational outcomes and processes: Use them to improve teachers’ professional development, not just to evaluate, reward and punish them.

Simply put, teachers deserve formative assessment too.