Collaborative Common Assessments. Cassandra Erkens
not provide a recommendation regarding what should be happening with specific assessments. The majority of large-scale assessments are given two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the school year, but there are exceptions. Some states or clusters of states will conduct large-scale testing in the fall as an indicator of student readiness for the upcoming year. The most popularly tested areas include reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies, but again, not all states or provinces test the same areas. Figure 2.1 shows districts or boards using similar testing patterns on a more frequent basis than the annual state or provincial testing systems. Building- and team-based assessments are conducted on a much more frequent basis and should certainly include both formative and summative options.
Note: The model depicted in this example is not suggesting that there should be two formative assessments and one summative assessment for each unit; rather, it is suggesting that in a balanced assessment system, there are far more formative assessments than summative assessments.
Figure 2.1: An assessment system example.
When it comes to designing healthy and balanced assessment systems, schools and teams should avoid adopting rules and patterns that oversimplify matters; for example, there is no such rule as needing to use two formative assessments and one summative assessment in every cycle of learning. There is, however, an expectation that teams use far more formative assessments than they do summative assessments in their team and individual classroom practices. At the classroom level of the diagram, Xs denote all kinds of ongoing assessments because teaching is assessing. The assessments at this level can range from the very informal, overheard student frustration, to the data following a formal exam. Classroom assessments cover all topics, all purposes, and all ranges of methods.
Essentially, figure 2.1 illustrates how assessment systems must be aligned. If the entire system is to work, there must be an aligned flow—from top to bottom and bottom to top, between classroom assessment and outside assessment monitoring systems. Unfortunately, many systems get stuck when outside, large-scale assessments and the metrics they employ to measure success drive the entire system.
District testing, sometimes referenced as benchmark or interim testing, is an important part of the assessment system. It is the only way to ensure there is a guaranteed and viable curriculum firmly in place across the organization. When used, however, district assessments should support teaching teams in their work with collaborative common assessments by providing systemwide validation and by identifying target areas that further inform a team’s grade- or department-level assessment work. Unfortunately, because many benchmark or interim assessments are patterned after the high-stakes assessments they feed into, they also fall short of helping teaching teams respond to their data in instructionally agile ways.
Depending on how they are developed and used, interim assessments can make a positive difference in student achievement. Former teacher and administrator, current leadership coach, and author Kim Marshall (2008) highlights the reasons that data from such assessments add value to the organization that employs them:
• Interim assessments can monitor growth from the beginning of a term to the end
• Interim assessments can be more encompassing and require learners to put knowledge and skills together in rigorous and diverse ways
• The results of interim assessments can be generalizable and visible, helping all stakeholder groups engage in analysis and discussion
• Cumulative interim assessments can help track student progress over time
• Results provide opportunities for support systems to be introduced to help both students and teachers
• Results help administrators understand the full picture of how things are going in their building. (p. 68)
It is a given that such assessments can be helpful for program data, especially in larger districts with multiple schools. And it is clear that the use of common assessments as interim or benchmark assessments can have a positive impact. The operative word, however, is can. More research is needed regarding the effectiveness of interim assessments. Studies are not yet clear what makes some interim assessments work better than others, which types of assessments work best, whether or not it matters who creates the assessments, and how the test design information is shared or not shared. For example, benchmark or interim assessments are developed and implemented in a variety of different ways.
• Schools, districts, or boards purchase predeveloped testing tools from outside testing companies, such as test item banks, online testing systems, or packaged curriculum- based assessments.
• Districts or boards—often those large enough to house their own assessment division—create their own assessments and strive to adhere to the strictest of standards regarding test validity and reliability.
• Districts, consortiums of districts, or boards bring highly respected teachers together to represent their peers and develop end-of-course or end-of-year assessments. In this case, the selected teachers are advised to return to their schools with generalities but not specifics about the assessments for fear that teachers will teach to the test.
• Districts, consortiums of districts, or boards invite teaching teams to write their own common assessments and then forward those assessments to the department leads or chairs who bring them to the district level where blending and integration processes begin to happen so all of the schools have input, but a shared set of common assessments emerges.
• Districts, consortiums of districts, or boards invite teaching teams to write their own common assessments and submit them for review and approval. In this case, the administrators generally monitor the consistency of the delivery system.
The assessment purpose (formative or summative) is often misaligned as well. In most cases, administrators will tell teachers that their benchmark, interim, or progress monitoring results are meant to be formative in nature, and teachers are advised to respond to the data accordingly to alter student success rates over time. More often than not, such assessments end up being summative in nature because of how the results are managed at the classroom level. Even if instruction is altered or additional support is provided, students are sometimes held accountable to all of the scores they generated along the way. Data are used for decision making, but teachers are often marginalized in how much freedom they have to interact with and respond to the results in a timely and effective manner. Worse, students, the primary decision makers when it comes to determining their own success, are often handicapped with pass/fail data that highlight areas of deficit, distort the reality of the specific gaps in understanding or skill, and minimize the assets they bring to the re-engagement process.
Moreover, the use of outside vendors’ ready-made tests rarely matches the specific demands of the standards. Speed, ease, finances, and an undeniable urge to pattern local interim assessments after large-scale national or state assessments have dictated that such assessments be measured via bubble sheets, an immediate misfire when it comes to measuring what matters. While previous and new versions of educational standards have been performance based, the selected assessments have not assessed at the levels of mastery required by the standards themselves. The things that the majority of colleges, businesses, parents, and entire countries value most—multidimensional problem solving, ethical decision making, and inventing or creating—cannot be measured in bubble sheets. The data that are gathered through such assessments have been predominantly based in content knowledge.
District- or board-level testing is important in designing and supporting an aligned assessment system. Such assessment systems set the standard for internal expectations and guarantee the readiness of their learners for the greater national expectations. As it stands, however, district testing has followed a pattern that educators themselves distrust and dislike. Done well, district testing can make a difference in leading the way to a better testing system.