1. Assessment and Innovation in Education
OECD/France Workshop - Innovation Strategy: Education and Competences
Janet Looney
7 December 2009

2. Do high-stakes assessments undermine educational innovation?
First questions:
Why innovate?
What counts as innovation?
What is the role of assessment?
What are the stakes in high-stakes assessments?

3. High-Stakes Assessments:
Help keep the focus on centrally developed standards and curriculum
Provide incentives to improve teaching
Place the emphasis on helping all students to achieve to high standards
Improve transparency (particularly important in systems promoting school choice)
Serve as a powerful tool for communication in the political realm
Serve as tool for selecting students for admission to higher education institutions with limited places

4. Tensions underlying assessment and innovation in education
Conflicting views as to “what education is for”
Tensions between high-stakes and school empowerment/risks inherent in innovation
Assessment and evaluation are vital to innovation, but also have the potential to undermine it

5. The evidence
The weight of the evidence points to the difficulty of schools and teachers initiating and/or sustaining innovation in a high-stakes assessment environment. High-stakes assessments do little to support and may undermine educational innovation.

6. Technical and social challenges
Difficulty of achieving “tight alignment”
Incentives to teach to the test
Evidence of negative impact on student and teacher motivation and engagement (although positive impact seen with mid-stakes assessments)
Challenge of shifting attention from student outcomes on high stakes assessments to use of data for school improvement

7. Reconciling assessment and innovation
Promoting innovative approaches to assessment
Rethinking alignment
Using multiple measures of student and school performance
Creating a better balance between high stakes and school empowerment
Supporting teachers (and students) to take risks inherent in the innovation process

8. Thank you