What will the future of K-12 assessment look like? Insights from K-12 leaders
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What’s the biggest pain point K-12 educators experience with classroom assessments?
If you guessed the time involved, you’re right. In our new national survey with Industry Dive’s K-12 Dive, the number-one challenge educators cite is that assessments take up too much class time.
That finding won’t surprise many teachers. Most states now require a range of assessments. These obligations only add to the responsibilities of K-12 educators, who already have the nation’s highest burnout rate.
As a result, the survey shows, educators are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to save time on assessments. While AI certainly creates a lot of efficiencies, it’s not a panacea for the wider problems plaguing the assessment process.
Is AI the future of assessment?
In the survey’s biggest surprise, 72% of K-12 leaders and educators say they already use AI in assessment or are considering doing so soon.
K-12 schools have largely been slow to adopt AI, so it’s especially telling that so many educators are embracing AI for assessment - and they’re doing so in large part to save time. About half of respondents identify the following AI features as “very valuable”:
- Reducing educator time spent studying assessment data by providing AI-driven insights (51%)
- AI scoring of open-ended responses (47%)
- Generating assessment questions (46%)
- Suggestions for teachers on what to do next following an assessment (45%)
Trent Workman, Senior Vice President of Pearson’s School Assessment division, agrees that AI can help “make assessment more accessible and actionable.” He says, “By providing an easy way to analyze various data points, AI can help educators tailor their instruction to better meet student needs and support school goals.”
Beyond AI
Adopting AI is a great first step to improve assessments and help educators better evaluate their students' progress while saving time, but schools need to look beyond the time-saving benefits of AI and re-examine assessments as a whole. As the survey shows, educators are grappling with assessment issues that AI won’t fix — and that it could even make worse.
In the words of Amy Reilly, Pearson’s Vice President of Assessment Product: “Integrating a new piece of technology won’t solve underlying problems in your assessment tools.”
Those underlying problems are extensive, the survey shows. For example, only about one-third of respondents strongly agree that they can pinpoint student needs (38%) or personalize instruction based on assessment results (37%). Just 44% say they can measure students’ progress toward specific learning targets.
In other words, educators struggle to understand what students have learned and then tailor instruction . . . which is the whole point of assessment.
AI data analysis won’t do much good if the data analyzed is flawed. Reilly explains, “When we don’t have [assessment] tools that produce valid and reliable results, we just create more noise for educators and take time away from positively affecting student learning.”
The Pearson report also sounds a warning about using AI to generate assessment questions. “Whether you’re using a generative AI tool to create assessment content yourself or using a vendor that has relied on AI, you need humans to review the content before it reaches students,” Reilly says. “You need assessment content that is grade-level appropriate, reflects the rigor of the standards, is free of biases, and is engaging for students.”
Fortunately, our upcoming report points to four other ways school leaders can shore up their assessment tools. It’s easy to think of cutting-edge technology such as AI when imagining the future. But these four fundamentals will ensure much more effective assessment in the months and years ahead.