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It is Time for a Major Overhaul of What and How we Assessment Mathematical Understanding

Hawaii State Dept of Education Conference

April 28, 2026

Steve Leinwand

Stevelmath@aol.com

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Where we start:

In a sentence, 21st-century skills cannot be measured, nor developed, with primarily multiple-choice test questions. Diverse workplaces that today value communication, collaboration, reasoning, justification, critical thinking, creativity, and flexibility – all with the considerable support of technology – are neither supported by, nor aligned with, today’s high-stakes mathematics assessments. A clear-eyed look at the assessment landscape reveals that current math assessments seriously undermine the teaching of mathematics, given that assessment content and format, and the instruction they drive, keep the primary focus on recall and regurgitation. Moreover, a society that is increasingly complex, nuanced, ambiguous, and technological is underserved by assessments that fail to ask questions such as “Why?”, “Explain your reasoning.”, “Justify your thinking”, “How might you convince us?” “Can you solve this another way?”– all of which are under-emphasized in typical instruction because they distract from skills practice and test prep, and until recently have been difficult to economically assess on a large scale.

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Reasonable?�Compelling?�Push Back?�Are we willing to take this on?

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Lest we think we don’t have a problem�

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Texas STAAR Assessment

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Honestly, we ought to be embarrassed.

It’s easy, it’s reliable, it’s cheap, and it drives curriculum and instruction to mindless answer-driven drivel.

But it’s also not that difficult to overhaul.

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NYSED.gov

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What do students need to thrive in the

21st Century?

To be able to think, reason, and solve challenging and relevant problems.

Where are any of these critical skills in our assessments?

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Source: World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 Figure 3.3.

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Why do we have/need assessment?

  • Third and co-equal leg of the plan – implement – evaluate stool
  • That is: Curriculum – Instruction – Assessment or the what, the how and the how well.
  • Effective assessment answers:
    • Did it work? For whom and how well?
    • Do we need to reteach?
    • Where among the three components might there be a need for revision?
  • Provides teachers, schools, districts, states and the nation valuable information – SO LONG AS IT’S VALUABLE INFORMATION AND THE ASSESSMENTS ARE ALIGNED WITH WHAT AND HOW WE TEACH!

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Current mathematics

assessment system

We’ve made great progress:

    • Online assessments
    • Adaptive assessments reduce time
    • Results returned sooner

But:

    • Far too much multiple-choice
    • Far too many DOK 1 vs DOK 2
    • Far too much skill vs. conceptual understanding and application
    • Too often inadequately aligned
    • College and career readiness is the common goal, but it is a moving target and a great deal of our high and medium stakes assessments have little connection to what college and career readiness means in 2025 for students who will be living and working in 2075.

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So we’re clear, we’re talking about a system of:

  • Classroom formative assessments
  • Common school or district unit assessments
  • State accountability assessments
  • NAEP, AP, SAT, ACT

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When Alexa, Google and AI tools can get Proficient or an A on many of the assessments we give students,

it’s time to consider elements of an ideal system of math assessment.

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Thoughts on much stronger and relevant mathematics assessment:

  • Online with drop down calculators and Desmos or equivalent beginning in grade 6
  • Within grade adaptivity, but not with off-grade content
  • High stakes state assessments in the fall of grades 4, 6 and 8
  • AI scoring of open-ended items on a Wow-Okay-Hmmm-Yuck 4-point scale with feedback to students and teachers
  • Open-ended, constructed response instead of multiple-choice with a focus on justification and explanation
  • An appropriate balance of skills, concepts and applications
  • More DOK 2 than DOK 1
  • For example:

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The Bus Stop Queue

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Tell a short story about when you might encounter these objects and explain whether or not you will make it to Omaha.

Omaha

Omaha

244 miles

Car Manual

Gas Tank Capacity:

21 gallons

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Average MPG:

28.3

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  1. Identify four mathematical things you notice here.

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  1. Identify four mathematical things you notice here.
  2. Predict when you will be at 100% and justify your prediction.

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Can innovative technology bring rich tasks to classroom and state assessments?

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AI

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So?

  • Order from smallest to largest and justify

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  • What is the height of Glass 3?

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  • What is the volume of each?

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  • If Glass 1 has volume V, express volume of Glasses 2 and 3 in terms of V

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  • When Glass 1 is ½ full, the height of the liquid is 3 cm. What are the heights of the liquid in Glasses 2 and 3 when they are ½ full?

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Next Steps:

To accomplish this overdue and critically needed agenda, we need a multi-pronged strategy involving position papers, research summaries, legislation, and state and national leadership.

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At its core:

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● State legislatures and state departments of education must shift policies, update practices and raise what it expected from assessment contractors.

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● Congress must amend the Every Student Succeeds Act to provide states with greater latitude over student assessment.

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● Schools and school districts, professional associations, teachers, administrators and parents must pressure policy-makers to enact these changes.

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Next Steps:

Among early steps might be:

● A Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) appointed task force of state assessment and mathematics leaders to provide direction, recommendations, and leadership in this initiative. We envision a coordinated program of initiatives to broadly till the soil for change, including position papers, journal articles, editorials and commentaries, exemplar items, and state and national legislative lobbying.

● Turn to non-profit and private funders to support a joint national convening of state-level mathematics leaders and state assessment leaders to begin discussions on modernizing state assessments, coordinated by ASSM and CCSSO.

● Empower NAGB leadership to update NAEP as an existence proof for potential changes. We envision NAEP, like PISA, as an exemplar of high-quality assessment.

● College Board and ACT leadership, where these influential giants provide existence proofs for many of these changes, as the SAT, the ACT, and AP assessments support, and provide leadership for curricular and assessment updating.

● Work with and through the newly reconstituted Mathematical Sciences Education Board (MSEB) at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine for feasibility studies and examples of modernized assessment items and practices.

● Lobby for shifting federal testing mandates with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

● Grants to change state-wide assessments

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A place to start:

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  • Comments??
  • Questions??

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Thank you!

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How about starting with your unit assessments?

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