Essential Assessment

Six Tenets for Bringing Hope , Efficacy , and Achievement to the Classroom

—Kim Bailey, Author; Education Consultant; and former Director of Professional Development and Instructional Support, Capistrano Unified School District

The topic of assessment has long dominated conversations about K–12 education. While research has revealed which assessment practices have the most positive impact on student achievement and instruction, out-of-date, unproductive assessment practices still persist. In Essential Assessment: Six Tenets for Bringing Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement to the Classroom, Cassandra Erkens, Tom Schimmer, and Nicole Dimich Vagle explore six essential tenets of assessment that can deepen teachers’ understanding of assessment to meet standards and generate a culture of learning.

1. Assessment purpose

4. Assessment architecture

2. Communication of assessment results

5. Instructional agility

3. Accurate interpretation

6. Student investment

When educators build their classrooms around these interconnected tenets of assessment, they can enhance students’ academic success and self-fulfillment.

Readers will: • Explore why it is vital that assessment practices build students’ and teachers’ hope, efficacy, and achievement

• Consider scenarios that illustrate traditional, outmoded assessment practices and revised scenarios that feature practices that better reflect modern assessment needs • Pause and ponder questions related to the content of each chapter and study next steps for teaching teams

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/assessment to download the free reproducibles in this book.

SolutionTree.com

ERKENS SCHIMMER VAGLE

• Discover the six research-based tenets of assessment and learn strategies for immediately acting on them

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl fre to ersi s re lv i th he ful ck e i Cl th

ASSESSMENT

E s s e n t i a l ASSESSMENT

Essential

“Essential Assessment provides a framework that outlines a foundation of beliefs and practices that reach far beyond the testing mindset to positively impact the lives of students and foster a sense of empowerment. With the six tenets in his or her back pocket, any educator will be more thoughtful and intentional about the culture of assessment promoted within his or her school and classroom.”

Essential

ASSESSMENT Six Tenets for Bringing Hope , Efficacy , and Achievement to the Classroom

Cassandra

Tom

ERKENS SCHIMMER

Nicole Dimich

VAGLE

Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Copyright © 2017 by Solution Tree Press

555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@SolutionTree.com SolutionTree.com Visit go.SolutionTree.com/assessment to download the free reproducibles in this book.

Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16

1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Erkens, Cassandra, author. | Schimmer, Tom, author. | Dimich Vagle, Nicole, author.

Title: Essential assessment : six tenets for bringing hope, efficacy, and achievement to the classroom / Cassandra Erkens; Tom Schimmer; Nicole Dimich Vagle.

Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016047169 | ISBN 9781943874491 (perfect bound) Subjects: LCSH: Educational tests and measurements. | Academic achievement. | Motivation in education. | Effective teaching.

Classification: LCC LB3051 .E735 2017 | DDC 371.26--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2016047169 Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife Editorial Director: Tonya Maddox Cupp Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Senior Production Editor: Suzanne Kraszewski Senior Editor: Amy Rubenstein Copy Chief: Sarah Payne-Mills Copy Editor: Evie Madsen Proofreader: Jessi Finn Text Designer: Abigail Bowen Cover Designer: Rian Anderson Editorial Assistants: Jessi Finn and Kendra Slayton

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

TABLE OF CONTENTS About the Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Brief Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Past Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Mixed Messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 New Aims. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Assessment at the Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 About This Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 It’s Personal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement. . . . . . . . . . . . 11 A New Direction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Measuring What Matters Most. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Measuring in Ways Conducive to Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement in the Classroom . . . . . . . . 20 Building Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Using Assessment Processes to Build Relationships . . . . . . . . 22 Creating the Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

vii

2

Assessment Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Understanding the First Tenet: Assessment Purpose . . . . . . . 29 The Evolution of the Modern Assessment Paradigm. . . . . . . . 30 The Formative Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Summative Purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Formative Assessment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Summative Assessment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Assessment Purpose in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 It’s About Use, Not Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Formative Targets, Summative Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Formative Imbalance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3

Communication of Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Understanding the Second Tenet: Communication of Results. . . 43 Formative Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Summative Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 The Power of Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Motive, Opportunity, and Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Personal Triggers Instead of Generic Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The More We Know, the Less We Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Grading and Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Communication of Results in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Formative Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Summative Feedback (Grading) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

4

Accurate Interpretation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Understanding the Third Tenet: Accurate Interpretation. . . . 61 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Accuracy and Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Accuracy and Reliability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

viii | Essential Assessment

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Table of Contents  |  ix Accurate Interpretation in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Establish Clear Criteria and Identify Evidence to Monitor Proficiency and Progress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Use Classroom Observations to Maintain Deliberate Focus and Monitor Student Responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Collaborate During the Development Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Collaborate During the Appraisal Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

5

Assessment Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Understanding the Fourth Tenet: Assessment Architecture. . 79 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Planned Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Purposeful Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Assessment Architecture in the Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Understanding Standards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Isolating Learning Progressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Outlining Levels of Complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Articulating Learning Intentions: Targets and Success Criteria . . . 87 Choosing the Best Assessment Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Designing Measurement Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

6

Instructional Agility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Understanding the Fifth Tenet: Instructional Agility. . . . . . . 97 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Asking Quality Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Employing Reciprocal Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Engaging in Class Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Analyzing Responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Generating Sufficient Sample Sizes of Quality Evidence. . . . 103 Instructional Agility in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Preplanning Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Generating Engaging Conversations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Analyzing Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Promoting Continued Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

7

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

x   |  Essential Assessment

Student Investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Understanding the Sixth Tenet: Student Investment . . . . . . 113 Research Synthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Promoting Self-Regulation and Assessment. . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Getting to Know Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Promoting a Growth Mindset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Student Investment in the Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 The Forethought, Planning, and Activation Phase . . . . . . . . 123 The Monitoring Phase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 The Control Phase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 The Reaction and Reflection Phase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Pause and Ponder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Risk Taking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Productive Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Celebrated Successes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Leadership When Assessment Is at the Center. . . . . . . . . . . 136 Read and Learn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Co-construct a Vision for Assessment With Teachers. . . . . . 137 Pilot Practices and Reflect on Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Ask Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Provide Resources and Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 A New Emphasis for Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

References & Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Cassandra Erkens is a presenter, facilitator, coach, trainer of trainers, keynote speaker, author, and above all, a teacher.

She presents nationally and internationally on assessment, instruction, school improvement, and professional learning communities.

Cassandra has served as an adjunct faculty member at Hamline and Cardinal Stritch universities, where she took teachers through graduate education courses. She has authored and coauthored a wide array of published trainings, and she has designed and delivered the training of trainers programs for two major education-based companies.

As an educator and recognized leader, Cassandra has served as a senior high school English teacher, a director of staff development at the district level, a regional school improvement facilitator, and a director of staff and organization development in the private sector.

To learn more about Cassandra’s work, visit http://allthingsassessment.info or follow @cerkens on Twitter.

Tom Schimmer is an author and a speaker with expertise in assessment, grading, leadership, and behavioral support.

Tom is a former district-level leader, school administrator, and teacher. As a district-level leader, he was a member of the senior management team responsible for overseeing the efforts to support and build the instructional and assessment capacities of teachers and administrators.

Tom is a sought-after speaker who presents internationally for schools and districts. He has worked extensively xi

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

xii | Essential Assessment

throughout North America, as well as in Vietnam, Myanmar, China, Thailand, Japan, India, Qatar, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

He earned a teaching degree from Boise State University and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of British Columbia.

To learn more about Tom’s work, visit http://allthingsassessment.info or follow @TomSchimmer on Twitter.

Nicole Dimich Vagle has a passion for education and lifelong learning, which has led her to extensively explore, facilitate, and implement innovative practices in school transformation.

She works with elementary and secondary educators in presentations, trainings, and consultations that address today’s most critical issues all in the spirit of facilitating increased student learning and confidence.

Nicole was a high school transformation specialist, where she coached individual teachers and teams of teachers in assessment, literacy, and high expectations for all students. She produced a training DVD that illustrates a protocol for examining the effectiveness of assessments and student learning. Nicole was also a program evaluator and trainer at the Princeton Center for Leadership Training in New Jersey. A former middle and high school English teacher, she is committed to making schools places where all students feel invested and successful.

A featured presenter at conferences throughout North America, Nicole empowers educators to build their capacity for and implement formative assessment practices, common assessment design and analysis, data-driven decisions, student work protocols, and motivational strategies.

Nicole earned a master of arts degree in human development from Saint Mary’s University and a bachelor of arts degree in English and psychology from Concordia College.

To learn more about Nicole’s work, visit http://allthingsassessment.info or follow @NicoleVagle on Twitter.

To book Cassandra Erkens, Tom Schimmer, or Nicole Dimich Vagle for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

INTRODUCTION Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

—Desmond Tutu Since the mid-1990s, no topic has dominated the educational landscape more than assessment. While we know much about how sound assessment practices contribute to achievement and student motivation, the gap between knowing and doing remains a vital point of interest as we build our capacity to put theory into practice.

Exploration in the field of assessment is long-standing and sometimes peppered with contradictions. Whether we go back to 1845 when schools began testing their students in uniform ways, or we traverse to 1969 to Benjamin Bloom’s claims that the effective use of formative evaluation is maximized when it is separated from the grading process, or we jettison to 2013 when a published anthology of international research (McMillan, 2013) highlighted the need for better classroom assessments, we can see that much thought and conversation have gone into the literature over time. We can also see that a gap still exists between what we know from the research and what we do in schools.

Clearly, the work around classroom assessment is not new. Events and evolving research continually change the dialogue over time. The advent of the standards movement in the late 1980s and into the 1990s launched a subsequent focus on students achieving proficiency (instead of simply accumulating points) through the demonstration of specific criteria. The evolving research on formative assessment (since the mid-1990s) shifted the focus from simply proving learning with documentation to improving learning with quality assessment processes. Predictably, changing times bring new concerns, such as the instructional complexities of helping all students achieve at high levels and the public backlash against the frequency and intensity of external, high-stakes testing. Once again, we are at a pivotal moment that requires us to take inventory to reaffirm, rework, and rethink our assessment fundamentals.

1

A Brief Inventory

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

2 | Essential Assessment

There is no shortage of research indicating the most favorable assessment practices.

The studies are plentiful, rich, and comprehensive. However, as we examine the assessment landscape, there are many distinct reasons we should take inventory of what we know and pivot toward what’s next in our collective investigation of how assessment can drive achievement. First, despite the depth of research, there are conflicting voices and messages that make it challenging for educators to pinpoint the most effective assessment practices (Heritage, 2016). Second, the emergence of cross-curricular competencies (also known as 21st century skills) as an educational priority alters the direction and purpose behind classroom assessment work. Third, the complexities of ensuring all learners achieve at high levels recertify assessment fluency and capacity as essential for all educators. And finally, and maybe most important, today’s learners are truly losing hope in the system. Absentee rates, dropout rates, and the disappointing discovery that only about half the students polled in a 2015 Gallup survey identify themselves as “hopeful” and “engaged” all highlight the loss of relevance and optimism that students feel toward school (Abdul-Alim, 2016). It is clearly time to rethink our assessment practices and beliefs.

Past Practice There are past (and sometimes newer) assessment processes that disengage learners and discourage learning. When educators employ assessments from curricular resources without careful attention to the standards, they can generate inaccurate or unhelpful information often used to make decisions about learners. When assessments are simply scored and recorded, they fail to give learners helpful insight into where they go next on their journey. When extraneous factors (like using zeros and taking points off) are put in the gradebook to inspire learners to improve, educators create insurmountable hurdles that guarantee mastery will be unattainable. In many cases, learning has been less about proficiency and more about earning points.

Researchers agree that such practices kill hope, undermine efficacy, and block deep learning. John Hattie (2009) references the research of Zoltán Dörnyei (2001) in a quote: Motivation is highest when students are competent, have sufficient autonomy, set worthwhile goals, get feedback, and are affirmed by others. . . .

Student demotivation [is] caused by . . . public humiliation, devastating test results, or conflicts with teachers or peers. For many, demotivation has more impact than motivation. Such demotivation can directly affect commitment to the goals of learning, turn off the wish for and power of

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Introduction | 3 feedback, and decrease involvement. It can take less effort by a teacher to demotivate students compared to the often greater effort required to motivate them—to turn students onto learning. (Hattie, 2009, p. 48)

Many of the more traditional assessment practices are falling short of building hope, efficacy, and achievement for the majority of learners in today’s K–12 classrooms.

Mixed Messages Most experts agree on the fundamental principles that guide sound classroom assessment practices. The mixed messages surface within classroom practice.

Conflicting messages create a level of frustration for educators trying to do the right thing with their assessment practices.

One place where these mixed messages have emerged is with formative assessment.

Most experts agree that, in general, formative assessment is assessment used to guide (not judge) learning; however, a closer examination of the professional literature reveals some disagreement with the granular details (such as whether to grade formative assessments, specifics on quality feedback, and so on). While some claim that scores interfere with the formative nature of assessment, others believe that without a score, students will not know where they are along the learning continuum. As well, some position formative assessment as having a smaller, more granular focus, while others believe formative assessment is akin to summative assessments that “don’t count.” Though classroom feedback is considered a formative practice, it also has its own supporting research. Effective feedback practices have also emerged as an area full of mixed messages. Recommendations about how much feedback to provide, what form that feedback should take, its timing, and the subsequent actions by both teachers and students still remain incongruent. While there is agreement on feedback fundamentals, the research is most often sourced from isolated measures (a one-time event) utilizing artificial tasks (activities unrelated to the typical school experience) with little acknowledgment or control of the significant impact both the classroom context and the student-teacher relationship have on learning.

Yet another area of assessment-related mixed messages involves the role, design, and use of summative assessment. While some question the value of summative assessment altogether, others call for a thoughtful, seamless relationship between formative assessment and summative assessment. Within the summative paradigm is an ongoing, rich debate between traditional grading and standards-based grading. At the systems level, the accelerated onset of standardized testing, its value to the system, its function in advancing achievement, and its role in measuring teacher quality result in a wide variety of perspectives, positions, policies, and practices.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

4 | Essential Assessment

Formative assessment, effective feedback practices, and summative assessment are three areas where mixed messages have emerged, but to be sure, they are not the only three. Clearly, there is a level of disagreement that needs to be reconciled for the practitioners and learners. These mixed messages about a core educational process make it essential for us to take inventory of where we are with our assessment practices, determine where we need to be to maximize the achievement of our learners, and identify the most efficient and effective pathway there.

New Aims Another force driving the need to take inventory of assessment practices is the emergence of cross-curricular competencies as additional important outcomes for our learners. Also referred to as 21st century skills, these competencies (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, to name a few) are now considered essential for learners to be ready for college and careers in a global economy (National Education Association, n.d.). While there is little disagreement about students’ need for and educators’ general excitement about the potential contribution these competencies can make to the classroom experience, the conversations about assessing these competencies leave us with more questions than answers.

Most of the cross-curricular competencies schools and districts are emphasizing are not new but have become ends rather than means. In the past, for example, we used critical thinking as a means to access certain curricular standards. Historically, critical thinking was not taught or assessed, but the process of thinking critically was used as a conduit to achieving certain standards. However, critical thinking has (along with the many other competencies) been repositioned as an end. Critical thinking is now identified as a necessary skill and a parallel learning outcome to teach and assess, and while the assessment of critical thinking may happen through nontraditional methods, we can still track and report our learners’ growth as critical thinkers just like any other skill.

The assessment of cross-curricular competencies requires a level of sophistication unlike traditional practice. It is daunting and requires meaningful guidance with purposeful attention to the most relevant assessment practices and metrics.

Not everything in the classroom needs to be assessed, but if schools and districts are going to publicly claim cross-curricular competencies as additional outcomes for learners, there is an obligation to assess them so the reporting of success and growth has credibility; without assessment, the claim of development remains a hollow, self-indulgent platitude. The assessment of cross-curricular competencies is both simple and complex. It’s simple because sound assessment principles apply seamlessly to this new process; it’s complex because our collective fluency and capacity with sound assessment principles are not where they need to be to reliably assess these competencies.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Introduction | 5

Assessment at the Center

Classroom assessment is central to every teacher’s success and every learner’s success. It is central to addressing the standards. It is central to guiding instruction. It is central to making individual and program improvements. It is more than just a measure of learning; it must promote learning. We hold the vision that assessment practices must build hope, efficacy, and achievement for learners and teachers.

As a way of encapsulating the essential assessment practices necessary to maximize the success of all learners and assisting with both taking inventory and reinvigorating the focus on assessment, we offer the six assessment tenets (figure I.1) as a framework.

1 2

Assessment purpose: Understanding assessment purpose means there is a clear picture of how to use the emerging assessment results before the assessment. The formative purpose of assessment is about continual learning; the summative purpose is about the verification of learning. Though they serve different purposes, formative assessment and summative assessment can develop a seamless, mutually supportive relationship.

Communication of results: The communication of assessment results must generate productive responses from learners and all stakeholders. Whether through feedback or grades, the communication of proficiency must serve as a catalyst for continual learning.

3

Accurate interpretation: The interpretation of assessment results must be accurate, accessible, and reliable. This means the assessment items and tasks must accurately reflect the standards for gathering information. Essential to accurate interpretation are clear criteria, aligned inferences of what the criteria represent, and continual calibration to avoid inconsistencies or tangential influences.

4

Assessment architecture: Assessment is most effective when it is planned, purposeful, and intentionally sequenced in advance of instruction by all those responsible for delivery. Assessment architecture is a blueprint that tightly sequences essential standards, teases out learning targets, identifies the assessments that reflect learning targets, and determines the use of assessments.

5

Instructional agility: Being instructionally agile means teachers have the capacity to use emerging evidence to make real-time modifications within the context of the expected learning. Whether at the classroom or school level, the true power of assessment comes when emerging results determine what comes next in the learning.

6

Student investment: There is a symbiotic relationship between assessment and self-regulation. When learners understand this, they are able to track their progress and reflect on what they are learning and where they need to go next.

Figure I.1: The six assessment tenets.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

6   |  Essential Assessment

These tenets are the foundation of Essential Assessment and provide a comprehensive, cohesive look at the most impactful assessment practices for student success.

Assessment is much more than collecting achievement data; it shapes the dispositions of our learners and influences their responsiveness going forward. It is as much about strategy as it is about culture. When assessment best practices are implemented in a culture that doesn’t support learning, the culture will triumph and the strategy will lose its power. A learning-rich culture provides opportunities for risk taking, productive failure, and celebrated successes. At their core, sound assessment practices foster hope, efficacy, and achievement. We know that sound assessment practices result in an increase in student achievement and in more students feeling optimistic and efficacious about their success.

The Framework The tenets are not hierarchical; rather, they are cyclical and interdependent. They operate between the driving vision and the necessary culture to support learning.

Toward that end, we offer figure I.2 as a representation of the interplay among the six tenets.

Communication of Results

Cultu

A Arcssess hit me ect nt ure

al on cti tru lity Ins Agi

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement

nt me ess Ass rpose Pu

A Inte ccura t rpr eta e tion

Student Investment

re o f L e a r n i n g

Figure I.2: The six assessment tenets framework.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Introduction | 7

Surrounding a focus on hope, efficacy, and achievement, the six essential assessment tenets enhance and transform the experience for every learner. We create a culture of learning through our assessment practices. An authentic culture of learning goes far beyond just personal relationships and collegiality. What we do instructionally sends a clear signal for how much student success truly matters. Make no mistake— strong personal relationships matter and certainly contribute to a positive culture, but peripheral personal relationships will rarely be enough to offset an instructional approach that emphasizes when students learn instead of if they learn. We use assessment practices to build relationships.

The key point to consider is the interconnectedness of each of the six tenets, and while each tenet can impact learners’ success, together they form a powerful approach to utilizing assessment to accelerate learning. First, there is a purposeful play among the three big ideas. Assessment architecture, instructional agility, and student investment are interdependent: the potential of each individual tenet is maximized when the other tenets are fully integrated into a teacher’s classroom practice. As well, success within the three big ideas is contingent on each of the other three tenets. For example, embedded within sound assessment architecture is clarity of assessment purpose, advanced decisions about accurate interpretation of results, and the plan for how those results will be communicated. So, while each chapter is built on a specific tenet, it is important to remember that the interconnectedness of the tenets is where the true power of assessment lies.

Assessment is at the center of so many important aspects of the school experience.

In the simplest terms, there are so many programs, processes, routines, and systems that lean on sound assessment practices to ensure their effectiveness. We can do assessment without these programs and processes, but we can’t do these programs and processes without sound assessment fundamentals. The six assessment tenets inform the school experience in significant ways.

About This Book We know that readers of this book will be in various places along their own assessment path. Some are at the beginning stages while others have a career’s worth of assessment experience. Wherever readers are on this journey, it is our hope that this book will move them further along that path and deepen their understanding of assessment.

This is the first of several books on our assessment tenets; this one is intentionally structured to provide an overview of the tenets and to illustrate their interconnectedness. For beginners, this book will bring the research-validated assessment practices

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

8 | Essential Assessment

to transform the classroom; for those with assessment experience, it will serve as a reminder of the core fundamentals while providing a framework for taking stock of the implementation of sound assessment practices.

Each chapter, focusing on a tenet, features a scenario illustrating a traditional assessment practice that is no longer relevant in our modern assessment paradigm.

We’ll explore the essence of the tenet and then revise that same scenario. In between, we’ll provide a corresponding synthesis of the research outlining the big ideas and specific strategies for immediate action, as well as some advice for moving forward.

Each chapter will conclude with a Pause and Ponder section with questions and next steps for teams to consider.

It’s Personal In our modern assessment paradigm, it’s easy to get caught up in the psychometric side of assessment. We have never been more clinically efficient in gathering and manipulating assessment information; and with our sophisticated databases and spreadsheets, it’s alluring to turn assessment into an exercise of number crunching and decimal places. But there is an art to assessment where professional judgment, personal relationships, and contextual underpinnings matter equally. Not everything can or should be quantified; not everything can lean on an algorithm. The complexities of sound assessment practices require a kind of finesse and judgment that may go against what a particular formula suggests.

This is personal. We can never forget that for every learner, the experience of being assessed will produce an emotional reaction. The question is whether that reaction is positive or negative. All of us remember an assessment experience in our own personal history that was less than ideal. Whether it was a test that contained questions that had little to do with the material taught, a pop quiz, or an unclear homework assignment, we all know what it feels like when an assessment is more of a gotcha moment. As educators, we must never forget what that feels like.

Assessment is choice. What we choose to do with assessment design, execution, and response reveals how we feel about learners, what kind of relationship we want to have with them, and how (or if ) we will support them when they stumble. The truth is that assessment is rarely a neutral experience; every assessment decision will contribute to or take away from the learning culture in the classroom. We can create a different experience, write different policies, and use results more wisely. We can begin (or continue to) use assessment to our advantage in building real relationships with learners. Being friendly is certainly important, but students learn about

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Introduction | 9

educators through decisions they make about the role of assessment in the classroom.

Assessment really is at the center.

Change doesn’t always come easy. Some may feel that changing is too risky. But what is the risk of not changing? What is the risk of staying stuck in antiquated practices that have little relevance in our modern assessment paradigm and continually make students focus on evidence that in some cases makes them believe they can’t learn? We know that assessment is an integral part of building a culture of learning. We know sound assessment practices can contribute to the hope, efficacy, and achievement of every learner. There are no more excuses; we simply know too much about how assessment can build ’em up or break ’em down.

This book is intended to help all educators—K–12 school leaders, administrators, classroom teachers, and instructors in higher education—make a positive difference in classrooms and school settings everywhere.

For those with a limited understanding of assessment, now is the time to develop the fluency and capacity to reshape the experience of all learners. For those with an extensive understanding of assessment, now is the time to recertify sound practices and begin (or continue) to lead others in their development. We can never forget that what we do (not what we say) with assessment declares everything about how committed we are to every learner. We know it’s messy, we know it takes time, and we know there is still much to learn. But we went into this profession to make a difference in the lives of students. We know our assessment practices are making a difference and generating an emotional reaction within each of our learners; the real question is whether that difference and that emotional reaction are positive or negative.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

CHAPTER 1

I touch the future. I teach.

—Christa McAuliffe This chapter examines the evolution of assessment. Throughout history, people have always tried to measure what matters most. Naturally, this means that measurement perspectives in the field of assessment have shifted focus over time to reflect the needs of the period (Clark, 2011; Gordon, 2008; Guskey, 2005; Shavelson, 2007; Shepard, 2000a). A close examination of small- and large-scale assessments reveals that the values and resources during various eras shaped what was worth measuring and how to best measure it. For example, Edmund Gordon (2008), a professor of psychology, influential thinker, and author, describes psychologists’ beliefs that intelligence is fixed during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. As such, society believed “low status populations such as recent immigrants and the descendants of slaves” had limited ability to learn and so “the functions of assessment were thus generally limited to classification, prediction, and sorting. The principal functions of education were thought to be the transfer of knowledge, skills, and values to those thought to be capable of benefiting from it” (Gordon, 2008, p. 3).

Fortunately, like all things in education, assessment is evolutionary. The more we know, the more we must improve our educational practices. Unfortunately, however, this storied history has put assessment on the never-ending treadmill of reform. As 11

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

HOPE, EFFICACY, AND ACHIEVEMENT

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

12 | Essential Assessment

Today, the work of assessment is lost in myriad demands. Educational researchers James Pellegrino and Susan Goldman (2008) describe the tension: Policymakers, educators, and the public are looking to assessments to serve a variety of purposes, including gauging student learning, holding education systems accountable, signaling worthy goals for students and teachers to work toward, and providing useful feedback for instructional decision making. (p. 8)

It isn’t that these purposes are misguided or that such results cannot be applied to answer significant questions regarding effectiveness, but, to date, the emphasis of assessment has been primarily on measuring learning rather than on supporting learning.

Thankfully, there is a united, vocal, and consistent stance among educational assessment experts that classroom assessment can and must be a tool to build hope, develop efficacy, and increase achievement for all learners (Chappuis, 2014; Davies, 2011; Hattie, 2009; Heritage, 2010a; McMillan, 2013; Shepard, 2000b; Wiliam, 2011).

The following scenario serves as a reflection of the reality in far too many schools.

It is a reality that endangers the work of deep learning.

Traditional Scenario The five teachers (Brenda, Josephine, Marcia, Raul, and Susan) on the science team at New Horizons Middle School welcomed Tam, their newest team member and already a seasoned teacher, to their first department meeting of the new school year with enthusiasm and apparent relief.

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

such, assessment has been the subject of significant laws and mandates that dictate large-scale actions. For example, when research indicated intelligence can be developed, new concerns emerged regarding existing achievement gaps. With these concerns came new policies to address those achievement gaps. Few can argue with the valuable premise of the No Child Left Behind (2002) U.S. legislation, which focused on raising achievement and creating equity for all. But the resulting mad dash to measure everything frequently and in financially feasible ways led educators to sacrifice accuracy and depth for ease and cost-efficient large-scale assessments.

With this influence, local assessments often mirrored large-scale assessments. In the end, the process morphed assessment from a learning tool into an accountability weapon used to threaten and, in some cases, even punish students, teachers, and schools. While there were definite successes in focusing national attention on reducing achievement gaps, many adults and children were subsequently left behind in the wake of the law’s implementation.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 13

“It promises to be a great year,” Marcia, the team leader, said. “I’m betting this will be the best we’ve had in a while!”

“Yeah, you’re lucky you weren’t here for the past two years,” Brenda chimed in.

“Oh? Why’s that?” Tam replied.

“By ‘mirroring,’ do you mean that the assessments are multiple choice and in other pencil-and-paper formats?” Tam asked.

“Absolutely!” Josephine answered with an eye roll and a fatigued gasp.

“But we do use other assessments, right? Like performance assessments? Essays?”

Tam asked.

“No,” Raul replied. “We don’t have the time for that. All the units are broken into six-week chunks. We teach one, use the common assessment to test it, and then move on to the next six weeks. There’s just too much to cover if we’re going to get our students ready for the state test in April. And, we have to get out of the ‘needs improvement’ status this year.”

Tam took a minute to process this information and decided to tread lightly with her next questions so as not to offend her new colleagues.

“I understand the need to assess the content delivered and demonstrate improvement, but I’m just a little confused about how we will teach and assess science processes like investigation if we never do performance assessments. Do we do our science experiments without calling them assessments and then use the pencil-and-paper tests to check for the details of the experiments?”

Brenda answered, “We don’t have time for the students to engage in experiments.

And we don’t have the money either. Plus, these students wouldn’t be able to handle the equipment, and we’d have mayhem on our hands every day. They are economically disadvantaged. They come to school without the basics like notebooks or pencils. And they don’t seem to care about taking care of things. Our bathroom walls are clean now because maintenance repaints every summer, but just wait a week or two, and you’ll see what we mean!”

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Marcia explained, “I don’t know if they told you during the interview process, but our school has been a school in need of assistance for some time now.

We’ve not been doing well on the district and state assessments. Our scores are consistently low. For the past two years, though, we’ve worked hard to create common assessments that mirror the district and state exams for every six weeks.

Fortunately for you, the assessments are now done, and we won’t have to work so hard to create everything. We can just go back to teaching.”

Tam was crestfallen. “But science is so hands-on! It’s where the fun is. How do we teach our students about science and responsibility if they never get to touch anything?”

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

14 | Essential Assessment

Immediately, Tam could tell she had offended some of her team members. She hadn’t intended to, but she was so saddened by what they were telling her that her exasperation just slipped out.

“Yes,” Marcia jumped in. “We’ll help you. We’ve learned how to get a lot of content in quickly, we’ve added a lot of test prep, and we’ve created systems within each cycle to ensure the students are proficient at each step before they advance. And, to be clear, we do experiments at the front of the room that students can watch, so it’s not like we’re not really doing science. We’ll have regular team meetings to show you how we do it. You’re a part of this team now, and like Raul just said, we all need to show improvement.”

Tam heard the implied conclusion to their conversation and realized that pressing any further would be argumentative, which she did not want to be on her first day with her new team. It was evident that things were not going to change in the near future. She had just signed on to her new post, so she would be the best team player she could be. But this was not what she had signed up for. Secretly, she feared that her over-tested students would learn to hate the field that she loved so much, and worse, that she herself would grow to resent teaching.

External tests have become the proverbial tail that wags the dog. The costs to both students and teachers have been grave. It’s time to put the tail in its rightful place and put appropriate emphasis and attention on classroom assessment. The SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment (McMillan, 2013) makes a clear and compelling case: the most powerful assessment educators can use to influence student learning and foster hope and efficacy is at the classroom level. We must shift our time and attention to the work that matters most.

A New Direction Promoting learning is the fundamental, universal mission of all schools. Classroom assessment resides at the heart of efforts to determine success with the mission for

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

“Listen,” Raul said, “we understand what you want. Ideally, we’d like it too. It’s just not feasible today with all this accountability stuff hanging over our heads. Get ready because your teaching evaluations will be based on how you do in the classroom and how we do as a team. We have to get these scores up, like I said earlier. We’ve been monitoring this for some time now, and we think we have a system that will work.

You’re just going to have to trust us on this as we get started.”

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 15

1. Are we measuring what matters most?

2. Are our methods conducive to learning?

Rapidly evolving changes in global expectations require us to examine whether we are measuring what matters most, and the steady, emerging volume of research regarding the science of teaching and learning behooves us to explore whether our assessment methods are conducive to learning.

Measuring What Matters Most When learning was considered an act of simple memorization, the task of measurement was easy: the more a learner could retain, the smarter he or she was. Testing for recall was fairly easy. Today, learning is about sense making, which involves conceptual understanding, idea integration, and the fluid application of knowledge with skills (Parsi & Darling-Hammond, 2015). Traditional testing methods or processes will not suffice.

Modern standards—often referenced as next-generation standards—require learners to be engaged in 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, and global citizenship, to name a few (National Center on Education and the Economy, 2007; National Education Association, n.d.; National Research Council, 2011; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2012). Each of these skills has its own set of challenges when it comes to assessing mastery. Moreover, multiple researchers and practitioners outline the self-actualizing skills students require to advance beyond their schooling as self-motivating, self-monitoring, efficacious, and adaptable lifelong learners (Brookhart, 2013; Heritage, 2013). Clearly, monitoring for mastery with a single assessment, much less a recall-based assessment, will fall short of measuring accurately or promoting continued learning.

How are all these skills accurately measured? The answers are a work in progress, but with technological advances, emerging models of robust tasks, and the demand for new metrics to measure learning, the future is promising. It is time for educators to explore and understand what it means to know something deeply. It is time to

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

both individuals and the collective whole. The core of assessment is steadfast: it has been and will always be the process teachers must use to gather evidence in the ongoing support and resulting measurement of student learning. But our understanding of assessment—its profound interconnection with instruction, its indelible impact on students, and its symbiotic relationship with motivation—must remain malleable. As we change with the times, the questions for moving forward in the field of assessment will always be twofold.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

16 | Essential Assessment

Measuring in Ways Conducive to Learning The greater issues before educators involve changing the paradigm of how to employ assessment as learning during instruction and how to meaningfully use assessment results to promote continued learning. How can educators engage classroom assessments to build hope, efficacy, and achievement for all learners? The model of teach, test, record, and move on is ingrained in schools—it’s even ingrained in students and parents. Everyone has expectations about what assessment should look like.

There is a significantly better way, but it won’t be easy to rewrite entire traditions and belief systems in existence for generations. The six tenets provide a framework for educators to change assessment practices and generate new ways of operating in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing global community. It’s time to move toward designing and using classroom assessments that engage students in provocative, interesting, and meaningful learning.

Assessment will always involve both supporting and measuring learning. What is assessed and how the assessment information is used set the tone in a classroom.

Assessment is powerful: it can be used as a weapon to kill hope or as a tool to create hope. Masterful teachers use the assessment process to establish a culture of and create the conditions for hope, efficacy, and achievement for all learners. For example, if every assessment mirrors the standardized-test format, it signals that doing well on the test is the goal. If the emphasis is on learning, the assessment is explicitly linked to learning goals so students see the connection between their work and what they are learning (the what we assess). Students who do not achieve essential learning goals are required to revise and engage until they do reach mastery (the how we use assessment). To be effective, quality assessment practices must be embedded in a learning-rich culture that provides opportunities for risk taking, productive failure, and celebrated successes.

Research Synthesis Thankfully, educators do know what to do—at least, there is a strong research foundation on which to recreate and, in many cases, simply refine our assessment beliefs

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

design a more refined and substantive picture of what learners know and can do. In the midst of all this work, educators must keep their wits about them; they must remain vigilant to the larger purpose and attentive to the limitations of assessment. A single instrument or task can only gather finite information in a setting or at a time that may not generate the best information or that may not be interpreted with the highest degree of reliability. In sum, it could be said it is the worst of times and the best of times in the field of assessment.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 17

and practices. Quality classroom assessment practices can reduce achievement gaps, dramatically improve student achievement, consistently increase graduation rates, and successfully prepare learners to be career or college ready. To do this, hope, efficacy, and achievement must remain at the forefront of our classroom assessment practices.

Hope

I know I will graduate from high school. (80 percent) I have a great future ahead of me. (64 percent) I can think of many ways to get good grades. (50 percent) I have many goals. (56 percent) I can find many ways around problems. (35 percent) I have a mentor who encourages my development. (33 percent) I know I will find a good job in the future. (63 percent) The 2015 poll finds that as students get older, their hope decreases (Gallup, 2016).

Hopeful students report fewer absences and higher grades (Gallup, 2016). Quality assessment practices lead to students understanding how to learn more, set goals, and problem solve. It stands to reason that all learners deserve and need hope. Through high-quality assessment practices, teachers become the mentors who encourage learning and who create and sustain hope.

Learners must continually receive dollops of hope during their learning experience.

Hope is a feeling of reasonable confidence in one’s ability to control the circumstances of any desirable or predicted outcome. Hope is not born out of naïveté or a false sense of security; rather, it is grounded in optimism and realistic expectations. In her 2004 book on confidence, author, professor, and celebrated change agent Rosabeth Moss Kanter defines this sense of grounded optimism as “positive expectations based

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

In the fall of 2015, more than nine hundred thousand students in grades 5–12 participated in a poll to gather information on four dimensions of student success.

Hope was one of those dimensions, signaling its powerful place in ensuring student success. “Hope has been linked to student success in school. Hopeful students are positive about the future, goal-oriented and can overcome obstacles in the learning process, enabling them to navigate a pathway to achieve their goal” (Gallup, 2016; Rand & Cheavens, 2009). Valerie Calderon (2015) reports that four in five adults see engagement and hope as important measures of school effectiveness while only one in ten adults says the same about standardized tests. The following statements make up the hope index, and the percentage represents students who strongly agree with the statement (Gallup, 2016).

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

18 | Essential Assessment

on specific facts that justify the optimism” (p. 326). Grounded optimism is synonymous with hope.

This does not mean teachers should be deceitful with learners about what’s actually happening. But how teachers gather information from and then respond to learners matters significantly. Kanter (2004) states: Confidence is real only when it is grounded in reality. The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems.

Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems, because they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what’s the point of even thinking about it? Indeed, psychologists have proven that optimists are more likely than pessimists to pay attention to negative information. (p. 210)

Hope is a powerful precursor to and outcome of learning. Learners need hope.

Teachers need hope.

Efficacy Efficacy requires both belief (“I have the capacity”) and action (“I will take the risks, even though failure is a possibility”). Efficacy sustains learners as they take risks, make mistakes, modify or adjust their approach or their conceptual understanding, and then attempt another try. Efficacy is required if learners are to build deep understanding and personal skill. In educational research, self-efficacy is shown to correlate with and even predict academic achievement (Usher & Pajares, 2008). Dale Schunk and Frank Pajares (2005) find that efficacious learners—those who demonstrate confidence in their academic capabilities—are better able to self-monitor, solve problems, self-evaluate, and persist in challenging circumstances than their peers with low self-efficacy.

Efficacy develops as the learner develops. Researchers link the development of efficacy to four sources: (1) mastery experiences, (2) vicarious experiences, (3) verbal

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Even in their most frustrating moments, learners must believe success is possible if not imminent; otherwise, they will abandon the task before them. It is imperative that teachers help learners build a repertoire of success—a history filled with evidence of capabilities—so that when learners do have difficult tasks, their hopefulness can fuel their stamina, and they can persevere in the face of a challenge. Hope is the engine that drives learning. Classrooms must be places filled with winning streaks.

Kanter (2004) notes, “Failure and success are not episodes, they are trajectories” (p.

9). Teachers must use the assessment process to create trajectories of hope.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 19

Carol Dweck (2006), Stanford University researcher and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, describes learners engaged in this type of work as demonstrating a growth mindset. She states, “This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. . . . Everyone can change and grow through application and experience” (p. 7).

Everyone has this capacity, but it must be developed and strengthened in classrooms where the intense work of learning occurs.

Assessment provides both the challenge and the results that help learners do two things: (1) define their self-beliefs and (2) refine their skills and strategies to accept future challenges. In her research on student motivation and efficacy, assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart (2013) states, “The main basis on which students will build self-efficacy for an assessment is previous successes with similar tasks” (p. 37).

Success, in this case, needs to be understood as either the accurate and quality completion of the task (so the learner received confirmation feedback) or the development of new understanding or skills as a result of self-corrections (so the learner engaged in corrective feedback and made the necessary improvement). There is a strong correlation between self-efficacy and achievement.

The act of learning requires investment from learners. They must be interested, motivated, self-regulating, self-reflective, and so on. To increase their investment, teachers must put the decisions about learning in the hands of the primary instructional decision makers in the classroom—learners. Learners require efficacy if they are to be successful in their ability to ask questions, seek or offer peer feedback, openly discuss and analyze errors, learn from their mistakes, tackle unfamiliar content, attempt untried strategies, and chart or monitor their individual growth over time. Learning is personal, social, and dynamic.

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

and social persuasions, and (4) emotional and physiological states (Usher & Pajares, 2008). Each source has a direct link to the classroom assessment experience. Mastery experiences are tied to a learner’s interpretation of the results, specifically successbased results, from previous assessment tasks. Learners also gauge their own success by monitoring the vicarious experiences of their peers; they are monitoring their own success rates by comparing their results to those of their peers. Third parties such as teachers, parents, guardians, or other perceived practitioners can offer powerful verbal and social persuasions in the forms of encouragement and feedback to keep the learner on track, especially when the challenge seems insurmountable. Finally, the mood or disposition that a learner brings to the task impacts self-efficacy. If a learner, for example, begins the task believing success is imminent, he or she will be more likely to succeed. The emotional and physiological source behind a learner creates the learner’s mindset (Usher & Pajares, 2008).

Achievement

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

20 | Essential Assessment

As challenging as it can be to work with students who have a range of abilities and interests in a single classroom, it is necessary to maintain high expectations for each learner. The author of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College, Doug Lemov (2010) states, “One consistent finding of academic research is that high expectations are the most reliable driver of high student achievement, even in students who do not have a history of successful achievement” (p. 1).

Hattie (2009) affirms Lemov’s assertion: “What matters . . . [is] teachers having expectations that all students can progress, that achievement for all is changeable (and not fixed), and that progress for all is understood and articulated” (p. 35).

It turns out that classroom assessment practices are directly linked to the promise of many schools’ mission statements, which often includes “all students will learn at high levels.” Brookhart (2013) states: In classrooms where assessments were less differentiated or undifferentiated, without much opportunity for student choice, and where ability grouping and normative comparisons were made, students were more likely to have a normative conception of ability. In addition to the achievement benefits, students who experience evaluations with clear criteria enjoy higher self-efficacy than those who do not. Higher standards lead to greater student effort on school tasks and to better attendance. (p. 37)

We must believe all students can achieve at high levels, and then we must alter our assessment systems to ensure that happens.

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement in the Classroom The work of a healthy classroom assessment system begins with a teacher’s hello on the first day. Teachers must strive to create a culture that is conducive to the risky

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Because the primary mission of schools is to create the optimum learning environment, the primary indicator of success will always be achievement. But this is more personal than a spreadsheet of external scores. Parents have the highest of hopes for their children as they enter the system; parents expect children to learn. Young, impressionable learners arrive filled with hope and enthusiasm; they want—even need—to be successful. Unfortunately, as early as the primary grades, some students begin to lose hope, often a direct result of classroom assessment practices that may be unengaging, miss the targeted needs of the individual learners, result in scores without corrective feedback, label or ability-track learners, or involve any other type of activity that destroys hope and fails to build efficacy.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 21

business of learning. It is about using assessments to build confidence and navigate challenges It is about play and listening and humility. It is about building relationships based on trust and rapport. It is the guiding vision and the firm foundation of every healthy classroom where learning thrives.

Building Relationships

When teachers make concerted efforts to build relationships with their learners, they send the message that they care, they initiate trust so learners will attempt future challenges, and they establish credibility and respect.

When teachers truly know their learners, they can glean student interests, traits, concerns, strengths, and opportunities for growth—all the ingredients teachers require to pique interest, make connections, and create relevance with content and instructional strategies.

There is yet another, possibly more compelling, reason that teachers should strive to really know their students, and it involves gathering and responding to emerging data during instruction. To do this with any degree of accuracy, teachers must know their learners well enough to interpret the specific cues that students send while learning. Hattie (2009) highlights the significance of relationships during the formative assessment process: Expert teachers are vigilant when it comes to monitoring student learning and attention. . . . They keenly read individual facial expressions and are well aware that superficial aspects such as head nodding often mask genuine learning. They make constant instructional judgments to avoid overloading their students, and become highly adept at matching curriculum tasks to individual capabilities and in providing acknowledgement and feedback.

They therefore are much more adept at knowing where each student should go next—this proficiency to know “where to next” based on student prior and actual achievement is a hallmark of their expertise. (p. 105)

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

It is a foregone conclusion that a teacher’s relationship with students directly impacts their learning. Hattie (2012) asserts, “A positive, caring, respectful climate in the classroom is a prior condition to learning” (p. 70). While research supports the need to build relationships in the classroom, the most compelling (and prevalent) reasons usually come from personal anecdotes about teachers who have changed people’s lives. Fortunately, there are many of these stories. Building relationships is beneficial to both students and teachers.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

22 | Essential Assessment

Solid relationships help teachers draw accurate conclusions about emerging data so they can make informed instructional decisions minute by minute.

Using Assessment Processes to Build Relationships When teachers use formative assessments the right way, they build meaningful relationships—teacher to student, student to teacher, and student to student.

Teachers engineer engaging conversations with learners about learning and then create the tools and protocols that will empower learners to accomplish the following together (Chappuis, 2014; Hattie & Yates, 2014; Wiliam, 2011).

Clarify the learning goals.

Establish the rationale and priority for their work.

Examine and evaluate examples of strong and weak work.

Design quality criteria and the corresponding measurement tools.

Peer edit and offer feedback to one another.

These activities are the foundation of instructional agility. This, of course, presupposes that the collaborative assessment tasks or prompts in which the learners participate are rigorous, relevant, and engaging. After all, the best collaborative protocols and tools in the world can never sufficiently compensate for boring, redundant, or uncomplicated tasks.

Yet another way to build relationships throughout the assessment process is to generate hope, efficacy, and achievement through a clearly delineated formative pathway.

Success breeds success. Assessments thoughtfully designed at appropriate levels of challenge and carefully sequenced to build competency over time can help teachers launch the winning streaks learners need.

It’s likely that the least discussed formative assessment strategy is also one of the best and easiest formative strategies teachers have at their disposal to build relationships through assessment: listening. When teachers control the instruction by doing all the talking, they subtly but firmly establish their superior, or at least learned,

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The need for quality relationships in the classroom extends far beyond teacherto-student connections. Learners must develop relational trust with their peers if they are to activate each other as resources during the learning process (Slavin, Hurley, & Chamberlain, 2003). Learning is social; it requires that learners take risks together, argue and negotiate key concepts, agree and disagree on criteria, and peer review their work so they can give and receive feedback. Empathy and understanding will be necessary so learners treat each other gently in the process and teachers can maintain a healthy culture. Formative assessment thrives on a foundation of healthy relationships.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 23

Listening needs dialogue—which involves students and teachers joining together in addressing questions or issues of common concern, considering and evaluating differing ways of addressing and learning about these issues, exchanging and appreciating each other’s views, and collectively resolving the issues. Listening requires not only showing respect for others’ views and evaluating the students’ views (because not all are worthwhile or necessarily leading in the best directions), but also allows for sharing genuine depth of thinking and processing in our questioning, and permitting the dialogue so necessary if we are to engage students successfully in learning. (p. 73)

Ultimately, listening creates a sacred space in which dialogue, thinking, reflection, and self-discovery can occur.

Creating the Culture Building classroom relationships involves deliberately attending to culture. Culture is experienced in the social hierarchy; the unspoken norms for conduct; the words, nonverbal communication, and paralanguage (pitch, rate, tone, and volume) that are exchanged; and the historical perspective that is repeated through stories. If the culture is not carefully structured and monitored, the work of formative assessment cannot be sustained. Far too often, a teacher’s words (“It’s okay to make mistakes in this classroom. We call those learning opportunities”) are accidentally and unintentionally misaligned with his or her practice (“I’m grading homework. Everything you do while you are learning will count toward your final grade”). It is at this very juncture that climate hijacks a teacher’s best formative assessment strategies. Learners will attend to what’s done more than they will attend to what’s said. Culture matters greatly.

Learning is risky business, so learners must be comfortable making errors: By knowing what we do not know, we can learn; if we were to make no errors, we would be less likely to learn. . . . Climate and trust are therefore the ingredients for gaining the most from making errors, and thus enabling students to be more impacted by our teaching. (Hattie, 2012, p. 71)

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

status. More important, they minimize the opportunity for students to fully engage by accessing and exposing their own strengths and opportunities for growth. When teachers listen more than they talk, they demonstrate humility, they exercise caution in their decision making, they gather important intelligence about the readiness of their learners, and, most important, they generate the space necessary for a learner’s peers to provide alternate perspectives and solutions. Hattie (2012) outlines a host of significant reasons that listening is a powerful formative assessment strategy as well as a tool for establishing meaningful relationships:

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

24 | Essential Assessment

With high-quality assessment practices, teachers pay continual attention to their word choice, tone, timing, intentions, and reactions. A slip of the tongue or casting of a sideways glance can break trust in a heartbeat, especially early on in the relationship, and then restitution will be required because trust and safety are crucial in the work of teaching and learning. As relationships deepen, trust is solidified and students become more in tune with an individual teacher’s phrasing and intent.

There is an art to asking questions, soliciting responses, responding to correct and incorrect answers, offering feedback, and eliciting engagement from shy personalities while subduing without squelching dominant personalities during class discussions.

Assessment is integral to instruction and is, by far, the single most important tool teachers can leverage to create hope, efficacy, and achievement for all learners.

A New Vision The five teachers (Brenda, Josephine, Marcia, Raul, and Susan) on the science team at New Horizons Middle School welcomed Tam, their newest team member and a third-year teacher, to their first-of-the-year department meeting with enthusiasm.

“It promises to be a great year,” Marcia, the team leader, said. “I’m so excited you’re here.”

“Thanks! I’m thrilled to be here. I’ve heard such great things about this team,” Tam replied.

“Well, we’re really glad to hear that,” Josephine chimed in, “but I have to say, you wouldn’t have heard great things a few years ago. We’re a work in progress.”

“What do you mean?” Tam asked.

“Well,” Susan said, “because we’ve been a school in need of improvement, we’ve had to step back and carefully examine our practice. We have worked as a team every step of the way. We’ve tried to be innovative, and we’ve been careful to examine what didn’t work as much as we’ve examined what did. We’ve learned so much in the past two years.”

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Teachers can help build a nurturing climate by attending to both the process and tone when interacting with learners. When it comes to process, it is important to establish rituals and protocols that outline the rules for engagement. Students must “have confidence that the interactions among other students and with the teacher will be fair and in many ways predictable” (Hattie, 2012, p. 70). They need to be assured that negative reactions will not be tolerated. They need modeling and rehearsal on how to send and receive feedback in a manner that is kind and accessible to their peers. They need permission to make mistakes and to not know things as they are learning. When such norms of conduct have been established, students can fully immerse themselves in learning.

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement | 25

“Yeah,” Raul said. “We’re a lot more focused and fun to be around now. Instead of getting bogged down in the testing conundrums, we decided to reinvent our assessment system. What better field to do it in than science?”

“Wow,” Tam replied. “You have me on pins and needles. What is it that you are now doing that’s so amazing?”

Marcia answered, “I guess it isn’t anything magical, really. In fact, I have to confess we just followed many of the research-based recommendations we could find. We began by taking a deep look at our standards. We wanted to get focused fast, so we prioritized our standards and then worked toward creating a guaranteed and viable curriculum by creating common assessments that we all committed to use.”

“You’re selling it short,” Brenda chimed in. “The fun part was examining the level of rigor that would be required of those standards and then co-creating the most amazing, engaging, rigorous, and comprehensive science assessments that we believed would help us take our learners to new heights while exposing them to interesting science. We knew these students needed high levels of engagement, explicit focus on the standards, and most importantly, a lot of fun with science.”

“Actually,” Marcia said, “you just reminded me that our work with making science fun came first. We knew that many of our learners have stressful home environments. We decided that the first and easiest thing we could do would be to smile. We wanted to be the bright spot in our students’ day. We knew they needed positive role models in their lives, and we wanted to be the trustworthy adults they needed to be successful. So we adopted the practices of playing and making their day in the classroom.”

Raul could hardly wait for Marcia to finish before he interjected. “Last year, we shaped our lessons so that we talked less and the students talked more. We set up the lessons to be inquiry based so learners had to think like scientists all day long in our rooms. It was simply fantastic! I learned so much by watching and listening to the students that way.”

“My favorite part,” said Susan, “was examining our results together, with the students, and then arguing like scientists about whether we’d found significant evidence to validate that we had achieved mastery with our assessments. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of that part.”

“Well, good,” Marcia replied, “because our work is never done. We have new learners this year and new opportunities to improve our lessons, our experiments,

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Josephine chimed in. “You know, I’m the oldest teacher on this team, and I’ve seen a lot of initiatives come and go. Frankly, I was exhausted and I actually planned to just ride it out until retirement. But I have to say that the work we have been doing the past two years has been so rejuvenating! I almost don’t want to retire!”

and our assessments even further. And I’m happy to report that our hypothesis has proven true; we’ve learned that if we engage students in the highest level of rigor, they will succeed on any assessment, whether provided inside or outside the classroom. We now have concrete data to suggest that our efforts are paying off.

The state scores are available, and you’re going to like the results!”

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl re to rsi sf re lve i th he ful ck e i Cl th

26 | Essential Assessment

As illustrated in this scenario, quality assessment practices can increase hope, efficacy, and achievement for students and teachers. When the process involves deep inquiry, an examination of the results, and a commitment to improve, students and teachers alike can use assessment information to learn over time. Early assessments become formative opportunities to help everyone reach the end goals successfully.

Pause and Ponder Take a few moments to reflect on the following questions.

What makes assessment practices conducive to learning?

Consider your current assessment practices. Are they uniform from classroom to classroom? Does the team or even the building have a culture conducive to learning?

If your team were to create a philosophy statement to guide your work with assessment, what would it be? What do you believe is the fundamental purpose of assessment?

Assessment practices at their best build hope and efficacy for learners.

As you examine your current practices, consider the following.

• What’s on your stop-doing list?

• What’s on your start-doing list?

• What just needs to be modified or refined?

What evidence will you monitor to ensure that your assessments are building hope, efficacy, and achievement for learners?

How will you support others on the journey to alter assessment paradigms in the classroom?

© 2017 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Tam couldn’t believe her good fortune. This was promising to be a fantastic year!

She was truly looking forward to her own learning opportunities with classroom assessment.

Six Tenets for Bringing Hope , Efficacy , and Achievement to the Classroom

—Kim Bailey, Author; Education Consultant; and former Director of Professional Development and Instructional Support, Capistrano Unified School District

The topic of assessment has long dominated conversations about K–12 education. While research has revealed which assessment practices have the most positive impact on student achievement and instruction, out-of-date, unproductive assessment practices still persist. In Essential Assessment: Six Tenets for Bringing Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement to the Classroom, Cassandra Erkens, Tom Schimmer, and Nicole Dimich Vagle explore six essential tenets of assessment that can deepen teachers’ understanding of assessment to meet standards and generate a culture of learning.

1. Assessment purpose

4. Assessment architecture

2. Communication of assessment results

5. Instructional agility

3. Accurate interpretation

6. Student investment

When educators build their classrooms around these interconnected tenets of assessment, they can enhance students’ academic success and self-fulfillment.

Readers will: • Explore why it is vital that assessment practices build students’ and teachers’ hope, efficacy, and achievement

• Consider scenarios that illustrate traditional, outmoded assessment practices and revised scenarios that feature practices that better reflect modern assessment needs • Pause and ponder questions related to the content of each chapter and study next steps for teaching teams

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/assessment to download the free reproducibles in this book.

SolutionTree.com

ERKENS SCHIMMER VAGLE

• Discover the six research-based tenets of assessment and learn strategies for immediately acting on them

E s s e n t i a l ASSESSMENT

ASSESSMENT

oy ew. se j en vi ha se re urc . ea ep p on Pl fre to ersi s re lv i th he ful ck e i Cl th

Essential

“Essential Assessment provides a framework that outlines a foundation of beliefs and practices that reach far beyond the testing mindset to positively impact the lives of students and foster a sense of empowerment. With the six tenets in his or her back pocket, any educator will be more thoughtful and intentional about the culture of assessment promoted within his or her school and classroom.”

Essential

ASSESSMENT Six Tenets for Bringing Hope , Efficacy , and Achievement to the Classroom

Cassandra

Tom

ERKENS SCHIMMER

Nicole Dimich

VAGLE