Massachusetts students who took state exams online in 2015 scored significantly worse than their peers who took the same exams on paper, especially in English/language arts, although the effect faded after a couple years of testing.
That’s from an article in Education Week (read it here) about a study into results of a test called PARCC. It shows that we should be cautious about tossing everything online:
Tthe AIR researchers found the penalty for online test-takers in the first year of administering the PARCC math exams was about 0.10 standard deviations, or the equivalent of a little more than five months of learning. The penalty for online test-takers in ELA was much higher, at 0.25 standard deviations, or 11 months of learning.
But in the second year of PARCC testing, those mode effects were much smaller: The penalty for online test-takers in math was about one-third the size of that found in 2015, while the penalty for online test-takers in ELA about one-half the size of that found in 2015.
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