What Assessment FOR Learning Can Do for You What AFL can do for you: How parents can stay involved with their children’s education, particularly at the middle school level. 2. How parents can support teachers and the schools in responding to greater accountability in meeting standards. Parents can use assessment information to help students learn more and decide what they can do to support their child’s learning.

1960’s Districtwide Testing 1970’s Statewide Testing 1940’s College Admissions 1950’s Commercial Tests 1960’s Districtwide Testing 1970’s Statewide Testing 1980’s Nat’l Assessment 1990’s International Tests 2000’s NCLB Every Pupil Test When we think of assessment we think of standardized tests. The reliance on standardized testing has grown in recent decades.

Formative assessment can and should be done NEW IDEA: Formative assessment can and should be done BY STUDENTS, as well as by teachers. The main purpose of standardized tests, or summative, assessments is to gather and report evidence of learning. But AOL doesn’t provide daily evidence of student achievement or the tools to understand if teaching and learning are working. Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is a process that occurs during teaching and learning, and can and should be done by students as well as by teachers. Formative assessment focuses on the day-to-day assessment that teachers use in their classroom to plan their instruction and provide feedback to students.

CRUCIAL DISTINCTION Assessment OF Learning: How much have students learned as of a particular point in time? Assessment FOR Learning: How can we use assessment to help students learn more? Summative assessment, or AOL, sums up the learning at a given point in time in the form of a test, quiz, project, report, etc. that is often used to determine a grade or score. The results are used for accountability. AFL is part of the learning process and helps teachers figure out what are the learning benchmarks, or targets, and assists students to better understand their strengths and areas for improvement. It takes advantage of the power of assessment as an instructional tool that promotes learning rather than an event designed solely for the purpose of evaluating and assigning grades.

Applying the Principles of Assessment FOR Learning Student-Involved Classroom Assessment Student-Involved Record Keeping Student-Involved Communications Teachers and students are partners in the assessment process. Students try to understand the target; act on classroom assessment results to be able to do better next time. Students are the primary users of formative assessment. Assessment is used to maximize student motivation and learning by involving students as full partners in assessment, record keeping, and communication.

A key premise is that for students to be able to improve, they must have the capacity to monitor the quality of their own work during actual production. This in turn requires that students: Know what high quality work looks like Be able to objectively compare their work to the standard Have a store of tactics to make work better based on their observations Royce Sadler, 1989

Effective learners operate best when they have insight into their own strengths and weaknesses and access to their own repertoires of strategies for learning. --Brown, 1994 Motivated students believe that success is in reach. Struggling students or failure accepting groups begin to see that they can succeed.

FEEDBACK The QUALITY of the feedback rather than its existence or absence is what determines its power. --Bangert-Dewns, Kulik, Kulik, & Morgan, 1991; Sadler, 1989 Feedback helps students better understand the meaning of success. It provides them with information on how close they are to the learning target.

Feedback is most effective when it points out success and is designed to stimulate correction of errors relevant to the task. --Bloom Feedback provides students with a greater sense of responsibility: What do I need to change my work to improve its quality? What specific help do I need to make these changes? From whom can I get help? What resources do I need?

With regard to feedback, research makes the case for the use of DESCRIPTIVE, CRITERION-BASED feedback as opposed to numerical scoring or letter grades without clear criteria. --Butler & Neuman, 1995; Cameron & Pierce, 1994; Kluger & deNisi, 1996 Feedback provides continuous and periodic verification of learning. It tells students HOW to improve.

The giving of marks and the grading function are overemphasized, while the giving of useful advice and the learning function are underemphasized. --Black & Wiliam, 1998 Grading every piece of work is misdirected. A numerical grade does not show students how to improve. Moreover, when grades are given students ignore comments and descriptive feedback.

SELF-ASSESSMENT Student SELF-assessment is crucial for feedback to be used effectively. Students are the ones who must ultimately take action to bridge the gap between where they are and where they are heading. --Sadler, 1989 Students respond to feedback through an on-going process of self-assessment. Self-assessment is necessary for students to acquire the language to communicate their strengths and improvements.

Self assessment by pupils, far from being a luxury, is in fact an essential component of formative assessment. --Black & Wiliam, 1998 Self assessment increases student motivation by helping them believe that the target is in reach. Students operate best when they have insight into their own strengths and weaknesses and can reflect on their progress. Self-assessment provides students with credible evidence that they’re doing better.

Formative Assessment: Three Guiding Questions Where are you trying to go? Where are you now? How can you get there? Better indicator of learning versus a one-shot test or numerical grade--grades don’t show students how to improve their work. AFL provides descriptive feedback on student’s strengths and weaknesses. AFL increases intrinsic student motivation--where they come to believe that they can succeed.

Basic Assessment Literacy Students, teachers, and parents need basic assessment literacy to be able to communicate learning and areas of academic improvement. Assessment Literacy means: Gathering dependable information about student achievement, 2. Using assessment process and results to promote maximum achievement

Quality Standards Why? Purpose What? Targets How? Method How Much? Sample Before using any assessment, the user must assure its quality through the application of specific quality control standards. Does the assessment measure what we think it does? Five standards for a quality assessment. Accurate? Avoid Bias & Distortion

Assess to meet whose needs? Purpose Assess to meet whose needs? Classroom *Students *Teachers *Parents A sound assessment serves clearly articulated and appropriate purposes-- Why are the learning targets being assessed? Who will use the information? What will the information be used for?

Sound Sampling *Gathering enough evidence to draw confident conclusions *Without wasting time gathering too much Does the assessment gather enough information? Teachers need to select just enough evidence of student achievement to lead to a confident conclusion without wasting time gathering too much. Need to sample enough information to be able to make a generalization about the level of student learning, efficiently.

Sources of Bias Assessment Assessor Student Environment __________________________________________________________________________________________ Assessment: Poorly worded questions Directions missing or vague More than one correct response Assessor: Cultural insensitivity in assessor Lack of rapport with assessor Student: Lack of reading proficiency Language barrier Poor health Lack of motivation, personal confidence, testwisness Environment: Noise distractions Poor lighting or temperature

Possible Achievement Targets *Master Content Knowledge 1. Know it outright 2. Know where to find it *Use Knowledge to Reason *Demonstrate Performance Skills *Create Quality Products *Develop Dispositions A quality assessment arises from clear and appropriate learning targets. Learning targets are achievement expectations that are clearly and completely defined. Content--master factual and procedural knowledge Reasoning--use content knowledge to reason and solve problems Skills--demonstrate mastery of a particular skill Products--create a quality product Dispositions--acquire positive affects or dispositions

Possible Assessment Methods *Selected Response *Essay Assessments *Performance Assessments *Personal Communication Different learning targets require difference assessment designs. Selected response-- multiple-choice true/false matching Essay--extended writing responses Performance--demonstrating skills or developing products Personal Oral Communication--interviews, oral exams, conferences, questions and answers