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New Hampshire Joins ESSA Innovative Assessments Pilot

The United States Department of Education has accepted New Hampshire's plan to join a pilot program for alternative student assessments under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

  • By Sara Friedman
  • 10/05/18

New Hampshire is the second state to join the U.S. Department of Education's Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) pilot program. IADA allows states to pilot state assessments on a small scale while avoiding double-testing students with pilot and state exams.  Over time, states will develop strategies to implement these tests statewide.

New Hampshire's Performance Assessment of Competency Education is a competency-based educational approach to make sure students are achieving critical knowledge skills.  These assessments are designed to be more integrated into students' day-to-day work than current standardized tests.

"This pilot program gives states the opportunity to make assessments more relevant to classroom learning while still providing important information about student achievement and growth," Secretary of Education Betty DeVos said.

Louisiana was the first state to get approval for the IADA pilot program in July 2018.  Louisiana's approach involves measuring student understanding in English language arts and social studies by assessing students on passages from books used in daily classroom instruction at regular intervals, rather than randomly selected texts once during the school year.

The Department of Education has the ability to authorize up to seven states to participate in the IADA program. On Sept. 17, the department issued a notice inviting new applications from states to the program for the fiscal year 2019. Interested states must submit a notice of intent to apply by Oct. 17 and the full application by Dec. 17.

More information about the IADA program can be found here.

About the Author

Sara Friedman is a reporter/producer for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe covering education policy and a wide range of other public-sector IT topics.

Friedman is a graduate of Ithaca College, where she studied journalism, politics and international communications.

Friedman can be contacted at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @SaraEFriedman.

Click here for previous articles by Friedman.


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