Letter to The Editor: Response to Commentary in Education Week

Testing Consortium Responds: ‘We Couldn’t Agree More’

Recently, Education Week published a commentary by Gregory Cizek, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The commentary, “The Widening Gulf Between Large-Scale and Summative Assessment,” focused on how Common Core State Standards have made it more difficult for teachers to develop their own classroom-based assessments.

Assessing these standards is complex, but it’s a problem worth solving.

Tony Alpert, Executive Director, Smarter Balanced

Smarter Balanced’s response to Cizek’s commentary appeared today (May 1) in Education Week. Our response focused on the tools and resources Smarter Balanced provides educators so they don’t have to develop assessments on their own. With more than 100 interim assessments and the vast resources in the Digital Library, educators have more resources than ever before to help with the formative assessment process in their classrooms.