The New Art and Science of Teaching. Robert J. Marzano
English language arts.
Source: Adapted from Simms, 2016.
Figure 1.4: Eighth-grade English language arts topics.
For each measurement topic, the team developed proficiency scales that districts and schools can customize by adding, altering, or deleting the text. To illustrate, figure 1.5 reports the proficiency scale for the topic of generating claims, evidence, and reasoning (GCER).
Figure 1.5: Critical concepts scale for generating claims, evidence, and reasoning at grade 8.
In all, about five-hundred proficiency scales like the one in figure 1.5 have been written for mathematics, English language arts, and science for grades K–12. This is a number that teachers could address in the time available. If district personnel wish to create their own, they should unpack their state standards and identify a small set of topics (fifteen to twenty-five) to focus on during instruction and assessment at each grade level for each content area. This rather straightforward effort solves a problem I believe is one of the most serious plaguing K–12 education: namely, a curriculum that is so bloated and cumbersome that it is impossible for teachers to teach well and, therefore, difficult for students to learn efficiently.
CHAPTER 2
Using Assessments
At its core, assessment is a feedback mechanism for students and teachers. Assessments should provide students with information about how to advance their understanding of content and teachers with information about how to help students do so.
The desired mental states and processes for assessment are that:
Students understand how test scores and grades relate to their status on the progression of knowledge they are expected to master.
To achieve these outcomes in students, there must be a transparent relationship between students’ scores on assessments and their progress on a proficiency scale. The following elements are important to effective assessment.
Element 4: Using Informal Assessments of the Whole Class
Informal assessments of the whole class provide a barometer of how the whole class is performing regarding the progression of knowledge articulated in a specific proficiency scale. Informal whole-class assessments typically don’t involve individual students’ recorded scores. The specific strategies associated with this element appear in table 2.1 (page 22).
The strategies in table 2.1 provide teachers with a wide array of options for informal assessment. Teachers can execute voting techniques quickly and repeat them multiple times. For example, the teacher asks a series of multiple-choice questions on score 2.0 content from a proficiency scale using PowerPoint slides. Students then use voting devices (such as clickers) to signify their answers. The teacher keeps track of the number of students who vote on the correct answers but does not record individual student scores. However, the teacher does report on the percentage of students with correct answers and uses that percentage as a barometer of how well the class as a whole is doing on score 2.0 content.
Response boards are similar to voting techniques. However, they provide more information. With this technique, students record their responses on erasable boards that are small enough for them to handle individually. Response boards allow for students to write short constructed-response answers. Upon the teacher’s direction, students hold their response boards up so only the teacher can see. The teacher quickly surveys student responses and reports on what percentage of the class seems to know the correct answer.
Table 2.1: Using Informal Assessments of the Whole Class
| Strategy | Description |
| Confidence rating techniques | The teacher asks students to rate how confident they are in their understanding of a topic using hand signals (thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, or thumbs-down) or using technology (for example, clickers or cell phones). |
| Voting techniques | The teacher asks students to vote on answers to specific questions or prompts. |
| Response boards | The teacher asks students to write their responses to a question or prompt on an erasable response board or response card. |
| Unrecorded assessments | The teacher administers an assessment and immediately has students score their own tests. The teacher uses scores as feedback but does not record them. |
Source: Adapted from Marzano Research, 2016s.
When the strategies in this element produce the desired effects, teachers will observe the following behaviors in students.
• Students readily engage in whole-class assessment activities.
• Students can describe the status and growth of the class as a whole.
• Students seem interested in the entire class’s progress.
• Students appear pleased as the whole class’s performance improves.
Element 5: Using Formal Assessments of Individual Students
Formal assessments of individual students provide accurate information about their status at a particular point in time on a specific topic. To obtain such information, the teacher designs assessments based on the proficiency scale for a unit or a set of related lessons. In effect, the proficiency scale is the foundation for any and all assessments. A specific assessment might focus on all the content levels of a proficiency scale (scores 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 content) or it might focus on only one level of a proficiency scale (such as score 2.0 content).
The various strategies that teachers might use to address this element appear in table 2.2.
Table 2.2: Using Formal Assessments of Individual Students
| Strategy | Description |
| Common assessments designed using proficiency scales | Teachers who are responsible for the same content taught at the same level work together to design common assessments that they use to provide formative and summative feedback to students on specific topics. They then express topics as proficiency scales. |
| Assessments involving selected-response or short constructed-response items | The teacher creates and scores traditional assessments that employ selected-response and short constructed-response items. |
| Student demonstrations | The teacher asks students to generate presentations that demonstrate their understanding of a topic. Teachers typically use student demonstrations with skills, strategies, or processes. |
| Student interviews |
The teacher holds conversations with individual students about a specific topic and then assigns each student a score |