In the last two or three months, news items have appeared around the country that question the use of standardized tests, for example, from admission placement to Kindergarten in New York city (ABC News VIDEO) to a national conference on a new study of the effects of using the SAT for college admission (New York Times). The Dean of Harvard Admissions stated at the conference:

At Harvard we get terrific students, and we turn out terrific students later on, Mr. Fitzsimmons said. Is that due to Harvard or is that due to the students to begin with? Who knows? There are fabulous institutions with relatively low test-score averages that are absolutely first rate, that take students from point A to point Z." He continued, Educational quality has nothing to do, or very little to do, with actual average SAT scores.(NYTimes, 9/29/08):

The theme that continues to come up across the nation is imprecise measurement of student skills. In assessment language, imprecise measurement means that there is something the tests measure reasonably well, but that imprecision, or lack of real validity or reliability of the tests is a rising concern. Although this imprecision has been well known throughout the testing community, the public is just beginning to join this conversation, and is just beginning to look around for non-standardized assessments that show student achievement.

Digital portfolios: An online collection of student work that exhibits evidence of student progress.

The SchoolWorks Lab, Inc., supports the use of alternative forms of assessment, such as portfolios of student work, that are usually discarded as measures of student achievement because they do not boil a student down into a number. However, alternative forms of assessment may be more revealing and may turn out to be a better predictor of student success, if admissions officers were able to access them in digital form. The potential use of digital portfolios that follow the student from grade to grade and from school to school and finally to college could be one of the most innovative and insightful ways for students to archive, display, and ultimately prove their acheivement.