Assessment for Learning

Assessment and Data
Phase 4

"Look-Fors" During Observation
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

Mastery of standards/objectives is measured one time, no actionable feedback is offered, and no additional opportunities to improve are available to students.
Students can retake assessments, but feedback is not provided to support growth, and their opportunity to demonstrate mastery is through one method repeatedly.

Developing/ Achieving

Students have choice in how they demonstrate mastery of standards/objectives.
Students are provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery across a unit and are supported with actionable feedback after assessments to support their continued growth.
Students take ownership over deciding when and how to demonstrate mastery - i.e., : they indicate to their teacher when they are ready and how they would like to show evidence of mastery.

Questions to Guide Observation

How are students assessed in the classroom?
Is one assessment administered to a whole class?
Does everyone receive the same type of assessment or are choices offered to students?
Is there evidence of students having some choice in when they demonstrate mastery of standards/objectives?
Is there evidence of actionable feedback with each demonstration of mastery?
Do you see students taking ownership of deciding when and how to demonstrate mastery?
Do you see evidence of how demonstration of mastery is monitored in the classroom, charts, learner profiles, or portfolios for example?

Resources

The Case for Authentic Assessment: The Case for Authentic Assessment provides an excellent explanation of the What and Why of authentic assessment.
How Do You Create Authentic Assessments?: This website takes readers through the steps of creating an authentic assessment. At the bottom of the page, there are links that further unpack each step.
Unpacking Formative Assessment: Dylan Wiliam unpacks formative assessment, discussing the five strategies that make up a smart formative assessment strategy: setting learning intentions, questioning, feedback, activating self, and activating peers.
Assessment for Learning Defined: This brief (2-page) article provides a quick definition of Assessment for Learning.
Five Keys to Comprehensive Assessment: Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond shares how using well-crafted formative and performance assessments, setting meaningful goals, and giving students ownership over the process can powerfully affect teaching and learning.
CCE Quality Performance Assessment Tools: Quality Performance Assessment: A Guide for Schools and Districts, created by performance assessment pioneer The Center for Collaborative Education, is for schools, districts and state boards of education wanting to create learning environments that emphasize deep understanding of content and effective demonstration of complex, 21st-century college and career ready skills using assessment as a tool. Many of the tools and resources offered in their full book are offered for free on their website. You can also purchase their full book on Amazon.
Work that Matters: The Teacher's guide to Project-based Learning: Developed by the Learning Futures project in partnership with High Tech High, this guide offers step-by-step advice on planning and managing extended, interdisciplinary projects, as well as useful protocols for critique sessions, templates for important documents such as project plans, and examples of high-impact projects.
Assessment Through the Student's Eyes: This article provides an explanation for why traditional assessment systems, those that essentially separate students into “winners” and “losers”, hinder student learning. It also describes an assessment system that enhances learning and sets up all students for success.
How to Develop Thinking and Assessment for Learning in the Classroom: This booklet is part of a series of guidance materials to support practitioners in implementing higher-quality teaching and learning by focusing on developing thinking and assessment for learning.
Embedding the Assessment throughout the Project: Assessment can be integrated seamlessly into project-based learning. This video shares different strategies and explains how they support deeper learning.
Student-Centered Assessment Resources: The Students at the Center project has produced the following suite of resources as part of a continued effort to help make the research papers and books come alive and be more applicable to those wishing to implement more student-centered approaches in the classroom, school, district, or beyond.
Strategies for Monitoring Progress: Vanessa Cramer, ninth-grade science teacher at the Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, MA employs a variety of techniques to help students monitor their own progress—with support from the teacher—toward specific learning targets.
Introduction to Leaders of Their Own Learning: Why Student Engaged Assessment Matters: The most important assessments that take place in any school building are seen by no one. They take place inside the heads of students, all day long. Students assess what they do, say, and produce, and decide what is good enough. These internal assessments govern how much they care, how hard they work, and how much they learn. They govern how kind and polite they are and how respectful and responsible. They set the standard for what is “good enough” in class. In the end, these are the assessments that really matter. All other assessments are in service of this goal—to get inside students’ heads and raise the bar for effort and quality.
Tuning Protocol for Tasks: This protocol is used to receive feedback about a performance task and improve it.
Assessment Validation Checklist: This checklist is designed to ensure assessments have technical quality, it should be used with this Assessment Validation Protocol.
Student Engagement Alignment Tool: This tool is designed for the self-assessment of practitioner-developed performance assessments for attributes that maximize student engagement.
Designing & Assessing Educational Objectives: Applying the New Taxonomy (Marzano): This 4 page document provides examples of language and examples for designing rubrics based on Marzano’s Taxonomy.
Developing Rubrics: This Powerpoint Presentation takes you through how to decide what type of rubric to use, how to break down standards or competencies into performance criteria as well as how to determine performance levels.
Calibration Protocol: This protocol is designed to calibrate the scoring of student work as you will explore the instructional implications of the prompt/task, student work, and rubric.
Teacher Learning Through Assessment How Student-Performance Assessments Can Support Teacher Learning: This paper describes how teacher learning through involvement with student-performance assessments has been accomplished in the United States and around the world, particularly in countries that have been recognized for their high-performing educational systems. They discuss how teachers’ engagement with performance assessments influences their understanding of the standards and their students’ abilities.