Assessment and Data

Students demonstrate learning through authentic, rigorous, and relevant assessment and engage in frequent feedback cycles in order to improve. Data drives instructional decision-making.

Phase 2: Demonstrating Mastery of Learning

"Look-Fors" During Observations
​Remember: The most helpful part of the observation is not checking off items but the conversations and reflections that happen after the visit.

Beginning/ Practicing​

• Students regularly demonstrate their learning in one or two ways, e.g., a multiple-choice exit ticket at the end of a lesson cycle.
  
  
• Students engage in assessments that are not reflective of real-world challenges, tasks, etc. that they might expect to face in a career.
  
  
• Assessment lives between the student and the teacher, i.e., students may not have an opportunity to share and/or defend their work to a public audience for feedback and celebration.
  
  
• Students engage in assessment that tends to focus on lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Knowledge and Comprehension).
  
  
• Students regularly engage with formative and summative assessment but may not see how it connects and drives their overall learning experience.

Developing/ Achieving

• Students regularly demonstrate their learning in many different ways, e.g., oral presentations, projects, essays/written compositions, portfolios, experiments, graphic organizers, multiple-choice questions, etc.
  
  
• Students engage in assessments that they would see in the real-world, i.e., assessment reflects tasks that might occur in college, the workplace, and adult life.
  
  
• Assessment might also be authentic if it mirrors what students might actually do in a particular discipline in the future, e.g., writing an op-ed to persuade an audience.
  
  
• Students have an opportunity to share and/or defend their summative work (e.g., a unit project) with a public audience for feedback and celebration.
  
  
• Assessments, when possible and meaningful, support students to make connections across content areas and apply what they know in an interdisciplinary way.
  
  
• Students engage in assessment that tends to focus on higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation).
  
  
• Assessment challenges students to think critically, exercise their creativity, collaborate, and communicate.
  
  
• Students are invested in the assessment because they understand the purpose of it, seize opportunities to share what they’ve learned, and value feedback and critique that can help them grow.
  
  
• Formative assessment is purposefully used to monitor daily and weekly progress; formative assessment is tightly aligned to summative assessment and is carefully scaffolded.

Questions to Guide Observation

• How do students demonstrate their learning?
• What do formative and summative assessments ask of students?
• Are students mostly expected to recall information and demonstrate comprehension, or are students asked to apply/analyze/synthesize what they’ve learned?
• Do assessments reflect an actual task or challenge that a student might face in college or career?

​Questions to Ask Students

• Based on the learning objective(s), how are you expected to demonstrate your learning? How will you show what you know?
• How can opportunities to show what you know help you grow?
• Why does your teacher ask you to demonstrate your learning?
• What are the different ways you show your teacher and your peers what you know?​

 
​Resources

• What Are Some Types of Assessments? , describes not only standardized assessments, but also includes alternative authentic assessments (Article from Edutopia)
• How Should We Measure Student Learning?, focuses on 5 keys to assessments (Video from Edutopia)
• Assessment Professional Development Guide, includes a series of workshop activities that could be used in a PD session about assessment with staff (Article from Edutopia)
• What is “Authentic” Assessment?, includes overview of assessment at a 6-12 school in NYC (Video from Edutopia)
• Studies in Success: A Survey of Assessment Research, reports the effectiveness of relevant evaluation of student work (Article from Edutopia)

Exhibits and Presentations as Assessment

• Using Exhibits as Assessment, includes an overview of how a K-8 school uses four annual exhibits for students to share what they’ve learned over the course of a unit
• Celebrations of Learning at Expeditionary Learning schools, includes two video clips: one that shows how kindergarteners share what they’ve learned with a public audience and another that shows how 7th graders shared their work at the end of an expedition

Portfolios and Defenses as Assessment

• Portfolios as Authentic Assessment, a toolbox that describes what a portfolio is, why portfolios are valuable, and how to create and use a portfolio in the classroom

Assessment in Project-Based Learning

• Resource List: Assessment in PBL, includes 20+ links to videos, blog posts, and tools to support assessment throughout a project​​

In the Field
Click here to view pictures and artifacts to see how personalized learning teachers and leaders in Dallas ISD are using data to drive instructional decision-making.