October 2004 — Advertorial

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The Evolution of Testing

Scantron’s Achievement Series Makes Teachers’

Lives Easier and Helps Students Succeed

Politicians call it accountability; kids call it testing; and educators have always viewed it as a necessary evil. Testing has undergone a significant evolution over the last three decades from something that helped teachers determine grades to being the core of a national accountability system. Scantron has been a constant throughout more than 30 years in education, and Scantron’s tools and technology have evolved to keep pace with different approaches to and visions of testing in education. The latest iteration of Scantron’s tools for testing is the Achievement Series, a powerful Web-based assessment platform that educators can use to develop and administer tests both online and on paper, capture results, and produce standards-based reports. One intent of the Achievement Series is that educators will once again view testing as a means to the end of all students mastering all standards.

The Past

Thirty years ago, quizzes and tests were used to help determine students’ grades and, in some cases, provide some diagnostic information about individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. Teachers typically constructed their own tests and seldom shared them with the teacher next door, even though they taught the same subject at the same grade level. One 8th-grade English teacher emphasized grammar and writing, while another emphasized literature and speech.

Historically, technology has made testing easier for educators. The advent of Optical Mark Readers (OMR), which read the bubble-in sheets, allowed for accurate and rapid scoring of true-false and multiple-choice tests. Initially, these tests had to be sent away to a facility for scoring. But in the 1970s, Scantron led the way in education with smaller, inexpensive scanners that could score a classroom set of quizzes in a few minutes. Vocabulary tests, daily quizzes, “checking for understanding” quizzes, and even parts of final exams could be scored rapidly and accurately. Teachers’ lounges were filled with the staccato echo of tests being scanned and scored.

The Present

Today is a different world. Every state has curriculum standards that define what students should know and be able to do. Because of the standards and accountability movement, educators are much more concerned about the quality of the tests they create and the extent to which they measure what is taught. They want to know precisely the strengths and weaknesses of each student, and they want the results of the tests immediately. Scantron understands what educators want; thus, they have created the Achievement Series. The Scantron Achievement Series is a powerful Web-based assessment platform with a content-neutral structure and multiple delivery capabilities. Educators use it to manage current tests and develop new ones, administer tests (online and on paper), and report results instantly. This is a system that is characterized by flexibility, timeliness and ease of use; provides alignment with any set of standards; and encourages collaboration among educators in creating tests and in analyzing and using results.