Dr. Sue Bechard of Measured Progress was a presenter at the China-U.S. Conference on Aligning Assessment with Instruction. The conference, held in Beijing in July 2005, brought together educators, researchers, government officials, and other professionals from both nations to exchange ideas, best practices, technologies, and research about the importance of aligning educational standards and assessments. 

The event, organized by the Beijing Institute of Education, Global Interactions, Inc., and the China International Conference Center for Science and Technology, was the tenth in a series of sessions developed to build an international network of education partners to enrich, enhance, and improve educational systems around the world. 

The conference sessions covered a range of topics, including developing aligned assessments, using assessment results, and ensuring technical adequacy and fairness. Each session was led by co-chairs from China and the United States.

The conference also included visits to Changping No. 2 Middle School and North City Central Primary School in the Changping District. These visits to two of Beijing’s model schools provided opportunities for U.S. visitors to meet Chinese educators, learn more about their emerging focus on differentiated instruction and “layered assessment,” and hear about China’s counterpart to NCLB, “It is not spring until all the flowers bloom.” In turn, Chinese educators and students inquired about practices in American schools and activities of American students. 

“I was tremendously pleased to represent Measured Progress at this important event,” said Bechard, who is director of the Office of Inclusive Educational Assessment. “China is obviously in the midst of major educational and social reforms and seeking to align their curricula with formative assessments and to use the results to drive instruction. They are striving to understand and respond to learning differences in individual students,” she said. 

Bechard presented a session on “Designing Alternate Assessments Meaningfully Aligned to Academic Standards for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities.” Based on current research, she explained that the best approach to designing alternate assessments is to align assessment content with a state’s content standards, promote access to the general curriculum, and increase instructional opportunities for students with significant cognitive disabilities. 

Bechard cited a project led by the Colorado Department of Education, in partnership with a seven-state consortium, which examined the approaches states use and the challenges they face in developing alternate assessments. The project produced six alternate assessments that incorporated principles of alignment during initial test development and employed universal design to bridge the gap between challenging content and the learning styles of students with significant disabilities. 

Reflecting on the conference, Bechard said, “China maintains its ‘one child’ policy, but lifted restrictions on where people can live. As a result, they are experiencing more diversity in their classrooms. The educators we met want to use modern research methods to evaluate how students are progressing on an ongoing basis, not just wait until their national high-stakes test is administered.”

“Chinese teachers are interested in how students with disabilities can be included in a system that previously left them behind,” she said. “This seems to be an emerging awareness, currently focusing on learning disabilities. They are seeking ways to evaluate the whole child, to show progress, and they are studying different approaches to accomplish this. I hope that our visit gave them some useful tools to improve access and learning for all students.”

Copyright 2005 by Measured Progress. All rights reserved.