Assessment FOR Learning – A Balanced Approach

1. Assessment FOR Learning – A Balanced Approach

2. Purposes • Identify components of a balanced assessment system. • Discuss appropriate uses of assessment tools and techniques. • Discuss the need for a balanced system to improve student learning.

3. How Are You Assessing? • At your table divide into two groups, identify all the assessments you use. • With the total group at your table compare and contrast the ways you assess student learning. Identify the most commonly used and the most unique approaches, record on chart paper. • Write each type of assessment on a Post-it note. • Put the Post-it notes aside until later.

4. FROM: Separating successful from unsuccessful learners Primarily summative Focus on large-scale assessments Teacher directed TO: Ensuring universal competence/success Balance of formative and summative Balance large-scale w/ classroom assessment Teacher and student focused Shifts in Assessment Practices

5. Balance Both Sides of Assessment SummativeFormative Large-scaleClassroom

6. Balanced Assessment System

8. Assessment FOR Learning(Formative) • Includes instructionally embedded activities • Usually teacher/locally developed • Yields rich diagnostic information • Happens while material is being taught • Informs and focuses instructional decisions • Isn’t used for grades

9. Assessment OF Learning(Classroom Summative) • Occurs after material is taught • Includes unit tests and other graded performances • Can be developed locally or purchased • Counts toward grades • Isn’t diagnostic

11. Benchmark / Interim Assessments • Are usually a form of summative assessment • Can be used as an early warning of performance on later high stakes tests • Often constructed by external sources • Can cover some or all of a year’s curriculum • Provides broad domain or sub-domain coverage (minimally diagnostic) • Results raise programmatic questions that require further investigation (*formative for program – not current student)

12. High Stakes Accountability Tests • Provide broad domain or subdomain coverage (minimally diagnostic). • Usually constructed by an external source. • Results raise programmatic questions that require further investigation. • Satisfy accountability requirements – state and federal. • Can give the “big picture” view of state and school performance.

13. Three Types of Assessment“(In)formative Assessments,” Harvard Education Letter, 2006

14. Assessment: Knowledge of Students In-depth knowledge of specific students National State District ClassroomAssessments Assessments Assessments Assessments Marzano, 1996

15. Assessments have various purposes, provide answers to different questions, address different users, and have varying implications for an assessment system.

16. Classroom Assessment User: StudentEDge(PDK), 2006

17. Classroom Assessment User: TeacherEDge(PDK), 2006

18. Classroom Assessment User: TeacherEDge(PDK), 2006

19. Instructional Support User: Principal, Curriculum Leader, Teacher TeamsEDge(PDK), 2006

20. Policy-Level User: Superintendent, Various Policy Makers (EDge, PDK,2006)

21. Balanced Assessment System “To maximize student success, assessment must be seen as an instructional tool for use while learning is occurring, and as an accountability tool to determine if learning has occurred. Because both purposes are important, they must be in balance.” From Balanced Assessment: The Key to Accountability and Improved Student Learning, NEA (2003)

22. Productive Leaves student confident and willing to try Helpful to teacher if assessment reveals what comes next in learning Counterproductive Leaves student confused, frustrated, and ready to give up Leaves teachers with no idea of what to do next Rick Stiggins, 2006 Emotional Dynamics of Assessment

23. Essential Classroom Assessment • Teachers are assessment literate. • Classrooms reflect a balanced assessment system. • Teachers are skilled users of both formative and summative assessment.

24. Standards are the Foundation for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment • Identify important learning • Manageable in number • Clearly articulated • Developmentally reachable by students • Organized in learning progression • Mastered by the teachers

25. Formative AssessmentCCSSO FAST SCASS Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended outcomes.

26. Define Assess Comes from the Latin verb ‘assidere’ meaning ‘to sit with.’ in assessment one is supposed to “sit with” the learner. This implies it is something we do with and for students and not to students. (Green, 1998)

27. Assessment in Support of Learning • Assessment quality must address the impact of the results on the learner and the learning. • Assessments must: • go beyond merely providing judgments about student performance to providing rich descriptions of student performance. • evolve from being isolated events to becoming events that happen in ongoing series to reveal patterns. • go beyond merely informing instructional decisions of teachers to informing decisions also made by students. Rick Stiggins, 2006

28. Research?? So, is this just the next new thing? NO! Research soundly tells us that formative assessment can positively impact student learning.

29. The “Black Box” Findings • Black and Wiliam’s research indicates that improving student learning through assessments depends upon five factors: • Providing feedback to students • Students’ active involvement in their own learning • Adjusting teaching to take account for results of assessment • Recognizing influence of assessment on students’ motivation and self-esteem • Ensuring students assess themselves and understand how to improve Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment,” KAPPAN, 1998.

30. What Does Formative Assessment Look Like in the Classroom? • Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success • Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks • Providing feedback that moves learners forward • Activating students as the owners of their own learning • Activating students as instructional resources for one another From “Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day” Leahy, Lyon, Thompson, Wiliam. 2005.

31. Essential Components • Formative assessment is NOT just another test. • Formative assessment is NOT about grades. • It’s about helping students move along a progression to higher levels of learning.

32. The Learning-Assessment ProcessA Model of Formative Assessment • Where are you now?(assessment goal) • Where are you trying to go? (instructional goal) • How can you get there?(what is needed to reachinstructional goal) From Atkin, Black, & Coffey, Editors; Committee on Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards, Center for Education, National Research Council (2001)

33. Classroom Questions • Can be formative or summative. • Classroom questions can be closed or open. • Can engage students in dialogue to extend learning. • Can be used to check for learning (e.g., exit tickets).

34. Closed Questions • Teacher has a predetermined correct response. • Concerned with the recall of facts; comprehension. • “Convergent” assessment aims to discover whether the learners knows, understands, or can do a pre-determined thing. (Torrance and Pryor, 1998)

35. Open Questions • Encourage students to think beyond. • “Divergent” assessment aims to discover what the learner knows, understands, or can do. (Torrance and Pryor, 1998) • Help develop student understanding and thinking. • Allow for a range of responses and increasingly challenging cognitive demands. • Encourage dialogue.

36. Productive Dialogue • Involves: • Challenge • Clarification • Elaboration of ideas • Suggestions • Observations • Reflections Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand

37. Questioning Activity • With you group, develop one closed question and one open question. • Discuss the value and purpose for each of these. • Be prepared to share.

38. Quality Feedback Should… • Focus on the learning intention of the task. • Occur while the students are doing the learning. • Provide information on how, why, and what the student understands and misunderstands. • Provide strategies to help the student improve. • Assist the student to understand the learning goals. Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand

39. Grades - Comment • Research shows that student given only evaluative feedback (grades) made no gains from one lesson to the next. • Students given only descriptive feedback (comments) scores an average of 30% higher. • Giving grades alongside comments cancelled the beneficial effects of the comments. Wiliam, 1999

40. Student Involvement • Self assessment • Peer assessment • Increases student engagement and student motivation.

41. Formative Assessment is at the Heart of Instruction • Multiple measures, multiple opportunities, frequent • Improvement over time • Collaborative • Informs students of their learning and progress • Informs teacher judgment and teaching • Directly affects student growth • Feedback into teaching and learning

42. Summative Assessment • “Sums up” learning. (Black and Wiliam, 1999) • “Looks at past achievements…involves only marking and feedback grades to students…is separated from teaching…is carried out at intervals when achievement has to be summarized and reported.” (Harlen, 1998) • Measures student learning.

43. Summative Assessment Necessities • Used for accountability in the classroom. • Assessment tasks must match identified learning targets. • Teachers need to know how to develop good measures of student learning. • Teachers need to be good consumers of purchased tests.

44. Teachers make the difference.