1. Assessing Student Learning
Introductory Presentation
Secondary
From Assessment Training Institute, and
Classroom Assessment FOR Student Learning,
Stiggins, Arter, Shappuis and Shappuis

2. Used with skill, assessment can
Motivate the unmotivated
Restore students’ desire to learn
Encourage students to keep learning
Create—not simply measure—increased achievement
--Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2006
Activity: “How Can Assessment Motivate Effectively?”
Purpose: To begin thinking differently about the connection between assessment and motivation
When You Would Use This: When you want a quick anticipatory set for challenging conventional thinking about the connection between assessment and motivation
Time: 5 – 15 minutes
Directions: This is the opening claim from the CASL book, page 3. Say: “We normally think of assessment as the measurer of change. Yet we know that it can do more. It can (read list). How can it do those things?” (Pause for a moment and then go on to the next slide.)

3. Think of a time you were assessed and it was a negative experience
Think of a time you were assessed and it was a negative experience. What made it negative?
Activity: “Plus/Minus”
Purpose: To present the five keys to assessment quality with process activities embedded into the presentation
When You Would Use This: When you want to personalize assessment’s effects on student motivation and point out the problems that students face when assessments do not meet standards of quality
Time: 15 – 60 minutes
Directions
Say: “Think of a time when you were assessed and it was a negative experience. What made it negative?” Have participants share their experiences with a partner for five minutes.
Then conduct a large group discussion, charting the causes—their answers to the part of the question that asks “What made it negative?”. Participants generally mention both accuracy issues and issues relating to impact on the student. Possible chart title: “Causes of Negative Assessment Experiences”

4. Now think of a time you were assessed and it was a positive experience
Now think of a time you were assessed and it was a positive experience. What made it positive?
Then say: “Now think of a time when you were assessed and it was a positive experience. What made it positive?” Again, give participants about 5 minutes to share experiences with a partner.
Then conduct a large group discussion, charting the causes—their answers to the part of the question that asks “What made it positive?”. Participants generally mention both accuracy issues and issues relating to impact on the student. Possible chart title: “Causes of Positive Assessment Experiences”

5. New Mission, New Beliefs Keynote Presentation Featuring Rick Stiggins
Activity: “New Mission, New Beliefs”
Purpose: To provide a comprehensive overview of a new way of thinking about the role of assessment in the classroom.
When You Would Use This: When you want participants to hear and discuss Rick Stiggins’ explanation of productive and counterproductive beliefs that underlie our capacity to use assessment to promote greater learning.
Time: Presentation is 50 minutes long. Part 1 is 29 minutes long and Part 2 is 31 minutes long.
Directions:
Show all or part of the DVD presentation. Part 1 focuses on beliefs about assessment that have prevented it from having maximum impact on student learning. You may wish to stop at the end of Part 1 and let the group discuss the questions posed by Judy Arter (on the next slide), or create your own processing questions. In Part 2, Rick describes an alternative vision of assessment that promises to have a major positive impact on student achievement and the conditions that need to be in place to achieve that vision. You may also wish to use the processing questions posed at the end of the presentation (on the slide following the next one) or create your own.

6. FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: All those activities undertaken by teachers and by their students [that] provide information to be used as FEEDBACK to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. --Black & Wiliam, 1998
“In the article, Black & Wiliam define formative assessment as (read slide).”

7. Research consistently shows that regular, high-quality FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT increases student achievement.
“They discovered that (read slide).”

8. CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
Gather accurate information about student achievement
Use assessment process and results to promote maximum student learning
This slide begins the introduction of the five keys of assessment quality, which comprises the rest of the presentation.
If you haven’t used the Optional Introductory Activity “Plus Minus” previously, you may want to use it here. A concluding slide for this segment asks participants to think back to their own positive and negative experiences and figure out which key or keys to quality were validated or violated by each.

9. ACCURACY EFFECTIVE USE PURPOSE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION DESIGN STUDENT
INVOLVEMENT
We have developed a framework of five keys to assessment quality that encompasses the research recommendations and forms the basis for our program. The five keys are Clear Purpose, Clear Targets, Sound Design, Effective Communication, and Student Involvement.
Each of the keys to quality is explained in depth in the text, Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right—Using It Well (CASL).
TARGET

10. ACCURACY EFFECTIVE USE PURPOSE
Key 1 is “Clear Purpose.” Who will use the assessment results and how will they be used?
The Optional Introductory Activity “Role Play: Users and Uses” could be used here, if you did not use it earlier.

11. Key 1: Clear Assessment Purpose
Always begin by asking
What decisions?
Who’s making them?
What information will be helpful to them?
To establish a clear assessment purpose we ask the following questions: What decisions will this assessment inform? Who is making these decisions? What information will be most useful in making those decisions? The answers to these questions determine what information is needed, and in what form--the key first step in assessment planning, whether you are developing your own assessment or selecting one already developed.

12. What’s the PURPOSE for assessment?
What is the purpose for the assessment? How do we generally use the results? What is the usual answer to this question?

13. Two Purposes for Assessment
SUMMATIVE
Assessments OF Learning
How much have students learned as of a particular point in time?
FORMATIVE
Assessments FOR Learning
How can we use assessment information to help students learn more?
“We can divide the purposes of assessment into two categories: assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Summative assessment, or assessment of learning, measures the level of achievement at a point in time. Standardized tests and benchmark assessments generally fall into this category. Any work that is evaluated that counts toward the report card grade we can consider an assessment of learning. So, if you think about all the assessments given over a trimester or quarter and how many of them are figured into the grade, you’ll discover that a lot of them, if not most of them, are assessments of learning.
Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, on the other hand, is not an accountability tool, but a teaching tool. We can conduct assessments to make decisions about instruction before the learning process or during the learning process. For example, we conduct pretests to help us decide where to begin with certain groups of students, and we give students quizzes to help them decide what their strengths are and what they need to focus on.”
If you have not yet used the Optional Introductory Activity “‘Inside the Black Box’ Excerpt Discussion,” you could use it here. If you used it earlier, you may wish to refer to it and only briefly explain the differences between summative and formative assessment. Or, you can summarize the information. (You will need to move slides 21 – 23 to this point in the presentation. Note that the handout page corresponding to this slide also includes a summary of the Black & Wiliam findings.)

14. Assessment for learning Assessment for learning
Balanced Assessment
Formative
Formal and informal processes teachers and students use to gather evidence to directly improve the learning of students assessed
Summative
Provides evidence achievement to certify student competence or program effectiveness
Assessment for learning
Use assessments to help students assess and adjust their own learning
(Paraphrase slide) You can see all three categories of decision-makers represented here. Remember, “formative” refers to the manner in which an assessment is used, rather than to any particular assessment instrument in and of itself. Formative assessments serve to inform decisions that increase learning, not merely to verify that it has or hasn’t taken place.
AA The Advanced Activity “What Assessment for Learning Looks Like” can be used here, if you didn’t use it earlier. Prerequisites for conducting this activity: Read CASL Chapters 1 and 2; also read the complete article “Inside the Black Box” (Black & Wiliam, 1998) and the article “Helping Students Understand Assessment” (Chappuis, 2005)
If you used “What Assessment for Learning Looks Like” earlier, you can remind participants that the Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning were developed to help students assess and adjust their own learning.
Assessment for learning
Use classroom assessments to inform teacher’s decisions
Formative uses of summative data
Use of summative evidence to inform what comes next for individuals or groups of students

15. Key 1: Clear Assessment Purpose
Always begin by asking
What decisions?
Who’s making them?
What information will be helpful to them?
So, the first key to quality is Clear Purpose. Who is going to use the results and how will they be used? These decisions determine what information is needed, and in what form.

16. Key 2: Clear Learning Targets
Know what kinds of targets are represented in curriculum
Knowledge
Reasoning
Performance skill
Product
Master the targets ourselves
Know which targets each assessment measures
Make learning targets clear to students, too.
Key 2, Clear Targets, requires four things:
We know what kinds of targets students are responsible for learning
We ourselves have mastered the targets we hold for students
We are able to identify which specific learning targets each of our assessments measures
We make the targets clear to students
“Key 2 asks us to be clear about the targets we intend to teach and assess before we plan our assessments. We need to know what kind of target the content standard represents, so we teach to the intended level of cognitive challenge, and so we can select the appropriate assessment method.” (Here you can explain a little bit about the kinds of targets, or just name them.) “We need to be competent, confident masters of the targets ourselves. We need to know what targets each assessment measures so we can ensure that our tests match our teaching and so that we can keep track of learning standard by standard. And we need to make our targets clear to students in advance of, or during, the learning.”
AA The Advanced Activity “Analyze Assessments for Clear Targets” fits here. Prerequisite for conducting this activity: Read CASL Chapters 1 – 4. (It supplements bullet 3 on this slide.)
AA The Advanced Activity “Student-Friendly Language” fits here. Prerequisite for conducting this activity: Read CASL Chapters 2 and 3. (It supplements bullet 4 on this slide.)

17. Clarifying Learning Targets
Begin with state standards
Order in learning progressions, if needed
Deconstruct into clear learning targets leading to each standard
Communicate the learning targets in advance in language students can understand
This slide is optional. If your content standards are written as clear targets organized into grade level progressions, or if you don’t want to initiate a discussion about the clarity of content standards at this point, you may want to skip this slide. You may want to edit the corresponding handout page as well.)
“Sometimes, the curriculum guides we are given are written at the broad, content standard level. In that case, we need to translate them into smaller, teachable chunks.” (Paraphrase slide.)

18. Products Skills Reasoning Knowledge
It is never the case that, first, students can’t meet standards and then all of a sudden they can. Rather what happens is that students ascend through progressive levels of mastery of foundations—they climb scaffolding up to a place where they’re ready to demonstrate mastery. Deconstructing state standards into learning progressions forms the scaffold for guiding teaching and focusing assessment for learning.

19. Key 3: Sound Assessment Design
Select a proper method
Select or create quality items, tasks, and rubrics
Sample appropriately
Prevent bias
Design assessments so students can self-assess and set goals based on the results
High-quality assessments are not built first and then retro-fitted into a context. After we have established the purpose and identified the learning targets to be assessed, then we are ready to (read slide).

20. Possible Assessment Methods
Selected Response
Multiple Choice
True/False
Matching
Fill in
Extended Written Response
Performance Assessment
Personal Communication
Questions
Conferences
Interviews
The assessment methods available to us fall into one of four categories: (read slide).
The methods are not interchangeable; some fit some contexts but not others. No method is inherently superior to the others. All are viable choices, depending on two variables: purpose—Who will use the information? What decisions will it inform? and target—What kind of learning do you want to assess?.

21. Key 4: Effective Communication
Provide students with timely, accurate descriptive feedback
Involve students in tracking and communicating about their learning
Use grading practices that accurately communicate about student learning
Interpret and use standardized test results correctly
“The most accurate assessment is wasted if its results are miscommunicated, or if they are communicated to students in ways that shut learning down. In Key 4, we focus on what needs to be in place so that everyone who receives assessment information can use it effectively. This includes providing timely descriptive feedback, involving students in tracking and communicating about their learning, grading accurately, and interpreting and using standardized test scores correctly.”

22. My definition of feedback: Characteristics of effective feedback:
This slide and the next one are optional. Even though in the “Leading Professional Development” seminar we share some of the research findings about effective feedback, the topic is best handled in the context of a learning team. Participants will have the opportunity to get a more in-depth understanding through reading CASL Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 as well as Creating and Recognizing Quality Rubrics Chapter 6. If you believe you will raise immediate resistance to this topic due to the time issue, then you may wish to save it entirely for learning teams, where the time issue gets resolved through reading, experimenting, and collaborative discussion.
If you think summary information about effective feedback would be well-received, you can ask participants to think about what they already know about feedback in preparation for sharing the characteristics on the next slide. Give participants about five minutes with these two questions and then invite volunteers to share what they know to be the characteristics of effective feedback. You could make a chart with that title and then compare what they said to the characteristics listed on the next slide.

23. Effective Feedback… Describes features of work or performance
Relates directly to learning targets and/or standards of quality
Points out strengths and gives specific information about how to improve
Occurs during the learning process
Limits correctives to the amount of advice the student can act on
As you share this slide, point out what they already said in the debrief of their discussion from the last slide. Tell them that the CASL materials contain information about how to provide effective feedback with different grade levels and different subjects, including how to minimize the amount of time it takes.
(If you plan to use the Advanced Activity “You Be George” as an illustration of Key 5, you can refer back to these points about effective feedback, because the test is organized to provide feedback that follows these guidelines.)

24. Key 5: Student Involvement
Students are identified as important users of assessment information
Students understand the learning targets and standards of quality
Assessments are designed so that students can use the results to self-assess and set goals for further action
Students keep track of and share their achievement
Assessment FOR Learning!
These are the key components of student involvement in assessment.
What is it about student involvement that works? Why does research support assessment for learning in the classroom?

25. 5 Keys to Quality Classroom Assessment

26. Requirement for Success? Quality Assessment!
All assessment arise from high-quality content standards
All assessments produce accurate evidence
All users use assessment to benefit student learning
You can use this a closure to the 5 keys of assessment quality. It can also be used as a summary of or addition to the points that participants shared in their debrief of “Plus Minus” (previous slide).
AA The Advanced Activity “Self-Evaluation” fits here. Prerequisite for conducting the activity: Read CASL Chapters 1 and 2. (This is Activity 2.5 from Chapter 2.) Also read Learning Team Facilitator Handbook Tab 1.

27. Expected Benefits and Proven Results
Assessment connected to learning
Better instruction focused on standards
Profound achievement gains for all students, with the largest gains for lowest achievers
More self-managed learning by students
These four points act as a summary of why schools would engage in this learning. Consider issuing an invitation to learn more through volunteering to join a learning team at the close of the presentation.
AA The Advanced Activity “Learning Teams—Why” fits here. Prerequisite for conducting the activity: Read Learning Team Facilitator Handbook Tab 1.
AA The Advanced Activity “Learning Teams—What” fits here. Prerequisite for conducting the activity: Read Learning Team Facilitator Handbook Tabs 1, 2, 3, and 4.
The file “Closing Slides” (a collection of student work that tells a story) fits here.