Linking Teacher Practice with Statewide Assessment of Education

In 1992, as part of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), the Commonwealth of Kentucky began using a statewide assessment system to gauge the success of public schools. This system included tests designed to measure student achievement in seven content areas. Schools were given either rewards for improvements in their students' achievement or sanctions and assistance for declines. HumRRO received the contract to research the link between teachers' instructional practices and student achievement scores.

A stimulus for conducting this research was the emphasis KERA placed on students' higher-order thinking skills through the use of tailored, standards-based, open-response tests. The learning expectations apparent in these tests were consistent with the objectives of reform instructional practices. The reform movement discouraged rote memorization, computation, text-based learning, and direct instruction (lecture) in favor of peer tutoring, real-world application, and other teaching pedagogy designed to stimulate higher-order thinking.

To examine links between instruction and scores on the Kentucky state test, HumRRO sent researchers into 20 public middle schools. They administered questionnaires, conducted interviews, and observed classes to document past and ongoing instructional practices. Those data were then compared to the schools' 1996 and 1997 Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS) assessment scores to determine the degree to which schools had improved.

Teachers, even within a single school, exhibited a large amount of variability regarding instructional practice. However, when instruction was divided between reform practices and text-based/memorization practices, the reform practices, on average, showed a more positive relationship with assessment scores. This relationship held true for school-level data and for subject-level data in mathematics and social studies, but not in science.

One of the practices categorized as reform instruction was teachers' emphasis on subject matter as outlined by Kentucky's content standards. As a result of inconsistent findings, a follow-up study examined how science and social studies teachers were designing instruction that addressed Kentucky's content standards. Results confirmed the obvious. The intersection of content and pedagogy is the heart of instruction, and it is at this intersection that teachers are working hard to understand the new expectations for student performance and create instructional activities that truly address the knowledge and skills embodied in these expectations.

In response to evaluation, Kentucky's statewide assessment will be changing from KIRIS to the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS), an instrument that includes both multiple-choice and open-ended response formats. CATS is expected to measure different domains of learning, and, as a result, has the potential to have an impact on teacher practice and demands on students. HumRRO plans to continue working with the Kentucky Department of Education to monitor these changes and explore possible links to student test scores.