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The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. Page 2 threatening it can be, for it can uncover issues around opportunities to learn that can be fairly well hidden with our traditional test structures. In considering these significant challenges, at Educational Testing Service (ETS) we are trying to reconceptualize assessment at a number of levels. We'd like to share with you some of our colleagues' efforts that vary on a host of dimensions; some of these efforts represent incremental improvements in our most traditional assessments, while others involve radically new approaches to assessment consistent with the most ambitious visions of Knowing What Students Know. What these efforts have in common, though, is that they have used technology to help unmask the constructs that are the targets of assessment. What do we mean by the unmasking of constructs and why is this important? Standardized assessments have often been characterized as irrelevant and arcane to the test taker. The recent characterizations of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) by Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California S ystem, are a striking example. Atkinson argues that the SAT is problematic, in part, because task types such as analogies are puzzle-like, limited in scope, and not directly linked to any California curricular frameworks. Thus, he contends that preparing for such tests distracts students and teachers from focusing on the important learning goals articulated in the state's K-12 content standards. Atkinson also makes the point that access to the secrets of these tests is not equitably distributed in our society. Such criticisms are not unique, and they point to a historical problem with traditional tests—the masking of constructs, that is, a lack of clarity of the meaning associated with performance. On high stakes tests, such ambiguity causes overwhelming attention to particular task types and to test questions themselves. In attending so nearsightedly to these test components, we lose sight of the constructs underlying the measures and why the original designers thought those components might be useful indicators of important knowledge and skills. For example, while some might argue that verbal analogy items are irrelevant to content standards, most educators, including cognitive scientists, would agree that analogical reasoning is critical to learning and performance in virtually any discipline. Similarly, although reading comprehension items might be criticized for a lack of surrounding context, few would argue that the comprehension of written text is anything but essential. The kinds of assessments envisioned in Knowing What Students Know are clearly designed to unmask the constructs by making the link between learning goals and assessment practices much more explicit. It is worth noting that much of the emphasis in this report is on providing rich, instructionally relevant assessment feedback to students. We would argue that the unmasking must begin far earlier. Students and teachers should have a much clearer sense of what is valued (i.e., the construct) through engagement with tasks more tightly coupled with content standards and instructional activities. The assessment tasks should facilitate, rather than interfere with, an understanding of what is important. We will briefly discuss three efforts that attempt to further unmask important constructs. Recognizing the dominance of standardized assessments and the important issues that must be addressed before the promise of a new generation of assessments is realized, we begin with two efforts focused on our more traditional tests. In these projects, we investigate how we can help
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