All across Ohio, students, families, and teachers are gearing up for the start of a brand-new school year. The last thing on everyone’s mind as they shop for school supplies and decorate their classrooms is state testing, which largely won’t occur until the spring. But it’s important to know that earlier this summer, lawmakers tucked some interesting provisions into Senate Bill 276 that could make state tests a lot more useful to families and schools going forward.
The topline takeaway is that the bill requires the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to examine how Ohio could implement a single, statewide “hybrid” assessment. More specifically, DEW has been tasked with researching and compiling data into a report for lawmakers that outlines how to establish a single assessment that provides two kinds of results: criterion-referenced and nationally norm-referenced.
To understand why Ohio should consider a hybrid assessment, it’s important to recognize how these two types of tests are different.
Criterion-referenced tests are, as the name implies, based on criteria. For Ohio’s primary and secondary schools, those criteria are the state’s content standards, which outline the knowledge and skills students are expected to master by the end of each grade. Districts and schools administer state tests to measure the extent to which their students have mastered grade-level content. Tests are scored by comparing performance to a standard of achievement known as a proficiency cut score. Students who score proficient are considered on grade level. Children scoring below the proficiency mark (limited or basic) will need extra support to catch up to their peers, while those who score above it (advanced and accomplished) are considered on track for college.
Norm-referenced tests, on the other hand, aren’t tied to state standards. Instead of a comparison to content standards, norm-referenced exams compare a student’s performance to other students and then determine a percentile ranking based on the distribution of test-takers. Schools often use norm-referenced exams as a diagnostic tool to understand how students have grown over time and how their achievement compares to that of their peers.
The upshot is that these are different tests, offering different results, which can be used for different reasons. Without criterion-referenced tests, it’s very difficult for parents and educators to objectively determine if students have met grade-level expectations. Since federal law requires states to administer standards-aligned tests as part of their accountability systems, maintaining a criterion-referenced exam is non-negotiable for Ohio. But norm-referenced results could give schools and families additional information and context that makes it easier to track student progress and identify needs. If DEW can develop a test instrument that reports both types of results, then Ohio parents and educators could have the best of both worlds.
That’s not all, though. As part of its report, DEW must explore several other dimensions of state assessment. There are three that are particularly interesting.
- A computer-adaptive design. As the name suggests, computer-adaptive tests adapt to students during the assessment process via computer software. In traditional, “fixed-form” tests like the ones Ohio currently uses, the difficulty level is the same for all students. With adaptive tests, however, the difficulty of students’ questions is determined by their previous responses. Although all students are tested on their current grade-level standards, students who answer questions correctly are provided harder items, and those who struggle with grade-level questions are provided easier ones to better pinpoint where they are. By targeting questions to a student’s ability level, the assessment can provide a much clearer picture of what students know.
- Producing a growth measure that leverages data from the grade level above and below the one being tested to more accurately reflect a year of learning. Because they’re designed to measure above and below a single grade level, adaptive tests could lead to better, more exact measures of student growth. Developing a more precise gauge of whether students learned a year’s worth of material in a year’s time for state report cards would provide a clearer picture of which schools are doing excellent work and which ones might need more support.
- Returning actionable results within one week of administration. For a long time, Ohio parents were forced to wait months for their students’ score reports. By the time they finally arrived, it was far too late to take advantage of the summer months to address academic concerns uncovered by the results or even plan for the fall. In 2024, policymakers changed the law to require public and private schools to provide score reports to families by June 30. While that was definitely an upgrade, the majority of students finish testing in May. A June 30 deadline is still a month-long wait (sometimes more). If Ohio’s new system could return actionable results within one week instead of one month, that would give parents and teachers far more time to plan accordingly for the summer and fall.
DEW is required to submit its report no later than November 15. We won’t know the feasibility of these changes until the department publishes its report. But making state assessments more useful to families and educators is a worthy goal. Here’s hoping Ohio can make it happen.
