We’re heading into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Far from getting a winter break, teachers, students, parents, administrators, policy makers and other stakeholders are all still busy trying to save the education of a generation.

Typically, high-stakes assessments serve a variety of purposes ranging from measuring student learning and achievement to providing school accountability. But as one UNESCO document from early on in the pandemic put it, “the interruption of these [high-stakes assessments and] examinations is delaying the decisions on student progression, certification, qualification and graduation, thus inducing critical implications on entry into higher education and the labour market, quality and equity of learning outcomes, and fairness in qualifications obtained, leading to lifelong consequences on the students and learners’ progression in life as well as a broader socio-economic impact on the economies and societies.” In other words, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Here in the US, schools continue to grapple with how to serve their students and communities best during the pandemic, whether that’s in-person learning, online learning or hybrid learning, and with the question of assessments following close behind. Different assessments have been cancelled, deferred, changed, replaced, moved online and/or maintained as before.

Meanwhile, the education of an entire generation continues to hang in the balance, requiring more conscious decisions, more recalibrations. More than ever, education and assessment need to serve all stakeholders, making it only natural to ask: What is the purpose of this particular assessment? Can the assessment fulfill its purpose under current conditions? If not, can the assessment be adapted to fulfill its purpose? And if so, can the assessment maintain principles of validity, reliability and fairness? And, last but not least, should this assessment be translated and adapted for additional audiences?

The work of figuring out what education and all its moving parts should look like and how they will work is ongoing as it must. But high-stakes assessments are not going away. Their insights are just too important. Assessments may look a little different for a while yet, but they still have their role to play in education and in measuring students’ learning progress—for native English-speaking students and English Learners alike.

Education in Translation

Responsive Translation is a leading provider of foreign-language translation, adaptation, validation and review services for K-12 education, including assessments, reports and educational materials. For more information, I invite you to contact me at 646-847-3309 or [email protected].