FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ACTION W. James Popham University of California, Los Angeles Oakland Schools—in Partnership with the Michigan Assessment Consortium: NATIONAL SPEAKER SERIES Waterford, Michigan February 6, 2015

Today’s Foci: Four Understandings about Formative Assessment What It Is and What It Isn’t What It Can Do and What It Can’t One Cut of Formative Assessment’s Cake Why Learning Progressions Must Lurk

Formative Assessment: What It Is Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning-tactics.

Formative Assessment: What It Isn’t It is not a test. It is not an interim test (also referred to as a benchmark or periodic test) administered every few months by schools or districts. It is not the unplanned, serendipitous use of student cues to adjust teaching.

A Turn & Talk Task Please turn to one or two nearby neighbors, if possible, selecting those who seem fairly bright. Assume they are not educators but, rather, laypeople who are concerned about our schools. They have asked you to tell them what is meant by this “formative assessment stuff.” Alternately, describe to each other what this label means.

Process to Base Adjustment Decisions on Assessment Evidence A Planned Process to Base Adjustment Decisions on Assessment Evidence FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT =

Why Michigan Teachers Should Routinely Employ Formative Assessment School Accountability: Because students’ performances on accountability tests will play a key role in determining a school’s success. Teacher Evaluation: Because the best evidence of student growth in teacher evaluation is apt to be students’ pre-post performance on classroom tests.

A Turn & Talk Task Please turn to one or two nearby colleagues, then take turns trying to persuade each other that teachers should use formative assessment on the basis of either (1) school accountability or (2) teacher evaluation. Thereafter, choose the other reason and, once more, trot out your persuasion ploys.

Formative Assessment: What It Can Do In a research review based on 250 empirical studies of classroom assessment that had been drawn from more than 680 published investigations, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam concluded: “The research reported here shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning.” (Assessment in Education, 1998)

Formative Assessment: What It Can Do Two Other Quotes from the Research Review: The student gains in learning triggered by formative assessment were “amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions.” “Significant gains can be achieved by many different routes, and initiatives here are not likely to fail through neglect of delicate and subtle features.”

And More Recently: “Five reviews of the research in this area synthesized a total of more than 4,000 research studies undertaken during the last 40 years. The conclusion was clear: When implemented well, formative assessment can effectively double the speed of student learning.” (Wiliam, Educational Leadership, 2007-2008)

And Even More Recently: “There is now a strong body of theoretical and empirical work that suggests that integrating assessment with instruction may well have unprecedented power to increase student engagement and to improve learning outcomes.” (Wiliam, D., 2011, Studies in Educational Evaluation)

A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT WORSHIP Besides Analytical and Empirical Undergirding, Here’s Spiritual Support: On October 13, 2009, I received an e-mail from a colleague in Ohio, Dr. Saundra Brennan, who relayed to me an invitation she had received from the Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators. It was to take part in: A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT WORSHIP

Formative Assessment: What It Can’t Do It cannot raise scores sufficiently on instructionally insensitive accountability tests such as those so widely used these days to satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

A Definition of Instructional Sensitivity The degree to which students’ performances on a test accurately reflect the quality of instruction specifically provided to promote students’ mastery of what is being assessed.

Why Might a Test Item be Instructionally Insensitive? Alignment Leniency Excessive Easiness Excessive Difficulty Confusion-Engendering Item Flaws Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links Academic Aptitude Links

Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links If an item gives a meaningful advantage to students from higher SES families, then the item will tend to measure what students bring to school rather than how well they are taught once they get there.

A 4th-Grade Reading Item: My father’s field is computer graphics. In which of the sentences below does the word field mean the same thing as in the sentence above? A. The shortstop knew how to field his position. B. We prepared the field by plowing it. C. What field do you plan to enter when you graduate? D. The nurse examined my field of vision.

Academic Aptitude Links If an item gives a meaningful advantage to students who possess greater inherited quantitative, verbal, or spatial aptitudes, then the item will tend to measure what students bring to school rather than how well they are taught once they get there.

A 4th-Grade Mathematics Item: Which of the letters below, when folded in half, will have two parts that match exactly? F (A) Z (B) S (C) B (D)

A Turn & Talk Task Turning to a colleague (If you seem to be running out of bright neighbors, you might move to another group.), assume that your colleague is not familiar with instructional sensitivity. Thus, please explain to your colleague what instructional sensitivity is, and how it can reduce the accurate evaluation of teachers or schools. Then switch roles.

Why Partitioning It Can Pay Off We will now consider a partitioning proposal, that is, a four-level view of formative assessment. Although this and other partitioning schemes should cleave to the essence of research-ratified formative assessment, they often help teachers clamber aboard the formative-assessment flotilla.

Four Levels of the Formative-Assessment Process Level 1: Teachers’ Instructional Adjustments Level 2: Students’ Learning-Tactic Adjustments Level 3: Classroom Climate Shift Level 4: Schoolwide Implementation

Learning Progressions Level 3 Shifts Learning Expectations Responsibility for learning Role of classroom assessment Level 4 Strategies 1. Professional Development 2. Teacher Learning Communities Four Levels of Formative Assessment Level 4: Schoolwide Implementation Level 3: Classroom-Climate Shift Level 2: Students’ Learning-Tactic Adjustments Level 1: Teachers’ Instructional Adjustments Learning Progressions Teachers’ Level 1 Steps Identify adjustment occasions. Select assessments. Establish adjustment triggers. Make instructional adjustments? Students’ Level 2 Steps 1. Consider adjustment occasions. Consider assessments. Consider adjustment triggers. Adjust learning-tactics?

Formative Assessment: Why Learning Progressions Must Lurk (What a learning progression is:) A learning progression is a sequenced set of building blocks (that is, subskills and/or bodies of enabling knowledge) it is thought students must master en route to mastering a more remote, target curricular aim.

Two Learning Progressions: Both Useful to Educators Upper-case LEARNING PROGRESSIONS Lower-case Learning Progressions

Target Curriculum Aim X An Illustrative Learning Progression Subskill B An Illustrative Learning Progression Enabling Knowledge B Subskill A Enabling Knowledge A

A Horizontally Represented Learning Progression Enabling Knowledge X Y Subskill Z Target Curriculum Aim Q

Formative Assessment: What a Learning Progression is not A learning progression isn’t unerringly accurate. A particular learning progression isn’t going to work for all students. A learning progression isn’t necessarily better because it’s more complicated.

A Final Turn & Talk Task Why, despite substantial empirical evidence to support formative assessment, are most Michigan teachers not actually using it in their own classes? Please explore this question with a neighbor or with your entire small group. Can you come up with any ameliorative fixes?

To travel more suavely along the formative-assessment trail, read one or more of these encapsulations of wisdom: Heritage, M., Formative Assessment: Making It Happen in the Classroom, 2010, Corwin Popham, W.J., Transformative Assessment, 2008, ASCD Popham, W. J., Transformative Assessment in Action, 2011, ASCD Wiliam, D., Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011, Solution Tree

Genial Jim’s e-mail address: wpopham@ucla.edu