Collaborative Common Assessments. Cassandra Erkens
time. Each task is an entire system in and of itself, and a change in one system will likely have an impact on the other systems.
Even though literature about the need to design backward has been plentiful since the 1990s, assessment is still treated as an afterthought (designed the night before the test or two weeks before the final exam) in too many classrooms and schools. This practice is akin to building a house and then deciding that using architectural blueprints might have been helpful to the construction. Constructing a house without blueprints is ludicrous; teaching to standards without knowing the final result in advance is equally ludicrous. Assessment can never be an afterthought. Instead, assessment must lead the work of curriculum selection and instructional planning. In the house metaphor, assessment, then, becomes the architectural blueprint from which the entire house is built. The standards serve as the specifications that inform the design, the assessment map of formative and summative assessments becomes the architectural blueprint to lead the design work, the curriculum becomes the brick and mortar as it makes the standards a reality, and the instruction—last in the design list—becomes the artistry that makes each house unique: the colors, the textures, the décor. This picture of where assessment belongs in the sequence (standards—assessment—curriculum—instruction) is not new; it has been around since 1998 with Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book, Understanding by Design. Education has simply been slow to change practice.
Why does it matter? If educators do not become assessment literate, functioning as architects who put the assessment process in its proper place with attention to detail, they run the risk of any—or all—of the following happening.
• Inaccurate assessments
• Invalid results
• Distrust of the system and the individuals who work in it
• And, worst of all, disengagement on behalf of learners
The costs are grave.
Assessment is teaching. To teach without engaging in profound and accurate assessment processes, day by day and moment by moment, is to engage in curriculum coverage. The measure of teaching must be based in whether or not the learning happened. The only way to ensure learning happens is to design the architecture of assessments and assessment processes, from preplanned formal assessments to in-the-moment unobtrusive assessment processes, which scaffold a teacher’s way to success. The expression “Begin with the end in mind” is insufficient; educators at all levels of the organization must always begin with ideas on how to measure the end they need to have in mind.
It is so important to stop thinking of assessment as a test or a single experience. Likewise, it is equally important to consider teachers as assessment architects rather than parcel out the individual assessment roles, such as test writer or data analyst, on an as-needed basis. Architects are highly trained individuals who must engage in systems thinking with large constructions and intricate details. To create a single freestanding and safe structure, they must adhere to rigorous standards, follow the principles of design, plan for functionality and creativity, and then monitor progress along the way as the building eventually takes form and stands independently.
Assessment architects must create and navigate an entire system of assessments. As contributing experts to the SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment, Christina Schneider, Karla Egan, and Marc Julian (2013) write, “In a balanced assessment system, teachers use classroom assessment, interim assessment, and year end assessments to monitor and enhance student learning in relation to the state standards and to the state’s goals for student proficiency” (p. 61). As assessment architects, teachers must understand how the entire system stands together, supports learning, and verifies achievement.
The System of Assessments
It could be said that collaborative common assessments were born out of a need to better prepare learners for upcoming interim assessments, which then strive to better prepare learners for external large-scale assessments. However, it’s time to turn the tables. In a far better approach, teams would generate rigorous and engaging collaborative common assessments that capture the heart and soul of their vision of success for learners. Teams would then use internal and external large-scale assessment data for validation that their local assessment efforts are aligned and equitable in regard to a shared set of standards and criteria for quality. In this model, the paradigm is inverted so that collaborative common assessments become the ceiling, while large-scale assessments become the floor or foundation to ensure quality from system to system. The nuance seems slight—like the difference between teaching mathematics to students and teaching students about mathematics—yet the change in focus is dramatic. The energy shifts from reactive to proactive, allowing for hope and passion to be rekindled for educators.
Still, the process of engaging in collaborative common assessments must involve balancing the entire system of assessments, from formative to summative and from classroom-level to external large-scale assessments. It requires teams to develop assessment literacy as they work together to explore learning throughout the instructional journey in all of the following ways.
• Exploring standards to identify specific learning expectations
• Creating an assessment pathway, rich with formative and summative assessments, and identifying which ones will be common along the way
• Writing assessments or reviewing and endorsing assessments in advance of instruction
• Aligning, modifying, and enhancing the curriculum resources to support students in acquiring the standards
• Providing targeted, responsive instruction aimed at helping learners develop the necessary skills and knowledge for success on the preplanned and preapproved assessments
• Exploring data—formative and summative, qualitative and quantitative—to understand the impact of their craft, identify nuances in results, and problem solve any detected gaps early on
• Examining student work to conduct error analysis and inform immediate next steps
• Examining student work to collaboratively score work and calibrate expectations to be exact and consistent
• Responding instructionally and in a timely manner with meaningful enrichments and targeted instructional strategies to re-engage learners in the learning expectations
• Monitoring for progress and celebrating successes along the way
The entire journey is collaborative and requires the full attention of all members of a teaching team in partnership with the greater context of the school, the district, and even the state. If teaching is less about coverage and more about learning, then the entire process requires that all eyes examine current practices in light of specific results, and all team members contribute to developing craft knowledge on how to accomplish such a complex, demanding task. No part of the team’s journey can be usurped by another part of the organization, such as the district, substituted by a ready-made assessment, or left to the machination of a handy number-crunching algorithm.
External Large-Scale Assessments
Large-scale assessments, sometimes known as end-of-year assessments, should provide the necessary components of measurement, confirmation, and results. Organizations—especially publicly funded organizations with a captive clientele—have an obligation to monitor or measure their effectiveness, to share their findings with their stakeholders, and to address any identified needs as they emerge. Data in isolation shape opinions. A teacher, a school, or an entire district can generate internal evidence that learners are achieving at high levels because they are all earning superior marks, but how do the criteria employed fare against the standards measured on a larger scale? Data in comparison create information. Organizations cannot make quality program improvements without such information.
Large-scale assessments are typically offered annually or bi-annually to help educational organizations identify the proportion of students mastering a given set of standards and then evaluate and address the institutional impact on student learning for the purposes of improving learning