What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Assessment

Leslie Walker Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781930556898
• eBook ISBN: 9781317923800
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This is the second edition of a highly successful book, previously titled Better Instruction Through Assessment: What Your Students Are Trying to Tell You. The revision was undertaken to respond to the No Child Left Behind legislation, which has changed the way we must look at students' achievement data. This book shows you how to get the most out of your state's high stakes standardized tests, use test results to make the right decisions about how to teach the students in your class, avoid becoming a victim of accountability systems, infuse "test savvy" into everyday instruction. It covers a wide variety of types of assessments – from classroom-based, teacher created tests to state-mandated, high stakes standardized tests, both selected response and performance assessment. Unlike traditional "textbooks", this book was written specifically for practicing teachers and administrators. It contains real-world examples which demonstrate the role of assessment in a teacher's daily work. It is filled with actual student responses and scenarios based on real life situations faced by teachers.

1

Why Do You Need to Know About Assessment?

Teaching has become an even more difficult and demanding profession than ever before. The curriculum gets larger and more complex, compounded with the addition of new objectives to be taught, including all of the new content that used to be taught at home and those topics that previously didn’t exist for the majority of school children (HIV, drug use, violence, etc.). Communities expect more out of their schools, and are more actively questioning the quality of student education. Most states have initiated accountability programs to identify ineffective programs or schools. The federal government has passed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a complex piece of legislation that includes higher standards for teachers and yearly assessments to demonstrate progress for individual students. Yet with all of these challenges, a tremendous number of dedicated people continue to commit to teach our children. These people will take teaching and learning to new heights in the twenty-first century.

The goal is a more effective educational program for all of our students. A good education for every child continues to be the key to the continued growth and success of our society. Students in the United States must be highly educated if they are to effectively compete in an international economy as adults. The fact is that we can, and must provide a good education. First, recent research provides much encouragement for improved student achievement with a paradigm shift in teaching and learning, where good assessment practice is the key (we can). Second, the federal government is demanding this improvement and is holding educators increasingly accountable for results by tying federal funding to accountability requirements (we must).

The Case for We Can

It is true that the children attending our schools today often face more challenges than ever before. For some of them, these challenges become significant barriers to learning. Pallas (1989) defines students as “educationally disadvantaged, if they have been exposed to inadequate or inappropriate educational experiences in the family, school, or community.” He goes on to summarize five areas that can put students at risk: poverty, race and ethnicity, family composition, mother’s education, and language background. Similar findings were reported by Datcher-Loury (1989), who studied the academic performance of a group of low-income black students. Interviews and observations of the mothers of these students led her to conclude that differences in family behavior and attitudes had significant long-term effects on the students’ academic performance. Straits (1987) showed that highly mobile students are also at risk for lower academic achievement. These are but a small sample of the early research studies, but they are representative of the findings.

This research suggests that the challenges students bring to school may be the major determinants of their achievement. However, other recent research suggests that this is not true. It comes from Dr. Bill Sanders, who has shown that the single most important factor in a student’s success in school is the teacher. A statistician, Dr. Sanders developed the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (Sanders, 2000). This system uses specially designed computer software and years of student test data to analyze the effectiveness of teachers. The program focuses on the gains made by students, so a teacher with low-achieving students will still be rated as “effective” if the students make progress during the school year, regardless of their starting point. The reader is encouraged to read more about this research for a complete understanding of the system, but just a few of Dr. Sanders’s and his colleagues’ research findings are pertinent to this discussion.

♦	“Differences in student achievement of 50 percentile points were observed as a result of teacher sequence after only three years.” A teacher sequence is three years of effective teachers versus three years of ineffective teachers, given equivalent student ability at the beginning of the three-year sequence.
♦	“The effects of teachers on student achievement are both additive and cumulative with little evidence of compensatory effects.” Once a student has an ineffective teacher, deficits are nearly impossible to eradicate for at least two years. Likewise, once a student has an effective teacher, progress is still evident two years later.
♦	“As teacher effectiveness increases, lower achieving students are the first to benefit. The top quintile (fifth) of teachers facilitate appropriate to excellent gains for students of all achievement levels.” In other words, the best teachers are successful in making progress with students at all levels.
♦	“Students of different ethnicities respond equivalently within the same quintile of teacher effectiveness.” A student’s socio-economic status or ethnicity does not explain differences in achievement as effectively as their teachers’ effectiveness.

These conclusions were published as part of a research progress report done by Sanders and Rivers (1996).

One of the keys to improved student achievement is a focus on individual students and their instructional needs. During the 2000–2001 school year, Superintendent John O’Rourke of the Howard County Public School System in Maryland asked for the names of all third graders who were reading below grade level. This important question sparked additional questions and ultimately served to focus the attention of the Howard County Public School System on the achievement of every child, in a foreshadowing of the NCLB legislation. Superintendent O’Rourke’s request also inspired an initiative known as Student Support Plans.

Although this initiative began with the basic identification of struggling students, it quickly took the next logical step to actively address these students’ needs. Student Support Plans are individualized instructional plans designed to address the specific weaknesses in reading and/or mathematics for students designated as working below grade level in those content areas. In order for students working below grade level to catch up with their on-grade-level peers, they must make more than a year’s growth in one year. Student strengths and weaknesses are identified, and research-based strategies are implemented to target instruction to meet individual student needs. These strategies may include a variety of formats, including interventions during the regular school day, after school, or in a summer program.

The Student Support Plan initiative has since become an integral part of Howard County’s Comprehensive Plan for Accelerated School Improvement, and it is resulting in students making more than one year’s growth in one year. Results at the end of the 2002–2003 school year (the end of grade 5) showed that a total of 197 of the 460 students in the original cohort were reading on or above grade level. This was an improvement for 43 percent of the students. A total of 123 (27 percent) of these students had been reading on or above grade level since the end of grade 4. Similarly, at the end of fifth grade, 78 of the 242, or 33 percent, of the original cohort of students were working on or above grade level. This was an overall improvement for 32 percent of the cohort students. These preliminary results suggest that with a focus on individual students and their instructional needs, we can improve student achievement.

What do the students themselves tell us? In 1993, the Howard County Public School System conducted a study to determine what some of the differences were between their high- and low-achieving students. The students’ responses suggested that the differences between the high and low achievers are not a factor of ethnic group or socioeconomic status, but are related to differences in academic values, expectations, and the commitment behaviors demonstrated. Higher percentages of high-achieving students reported that their parents knew how they were doing in school. These higher achievers also demonstrated more commitment behaviors such as completing homework and other assignments on time, and persisting with difficult school-work. These students also perceived their teachers as having high expectations for them. The lower-achieving students did not perceive their teachers as having high expectations for them or calling on them as often as high-achieving students. Although 96 percent of students reported that their parents think that school is important, and 88 percent are expected to get good grades, only 61 percent think it is important to work hard in school. Some students do not see a link between the effort they put into their school work and their grades. Only 67 percent believed they would get better scores on a test if they studied for it.

These findings suggest the possibility that some students do not believe the assessments they are given accurately assess what they have learned—in other words, the students believe that the assessments are not valid. The findings also suggest that students do not believe that they have sufficient information or control to improve their performance. Although research supports the need for positive involvement from parents, teachers, and students, as well as high expectations and encouragement from parents or family, it also suggests that many answers can be found in the classroom. This is good news! When we empower all students to engage meaningfully in the learning process, we will unlock the gates to learning for all students.

Be the Best You Can Be

It can be frightening to learn that, even with all of the challenges facing students today, their teachers are still the single most important factor in student academic growth rates. All teachers want their students to succeed, but many teachers do not know how to improve their students’ achievement. This can be partially attributed to the fact that most teacher-training programs include little, if any, coursework in assessment. (Cizek, 2000; Schafer & Lissitz, 1987; Stiggins, 1999) Yet, as a teacher, you cannot possibly be effective if you do not have the skills to determine your students’ instructional needs. You will spend a good third of your time assessing your students. You assess their needs almost automatically when they ask or answer a question. You observe them in the classroom as they work on assignments. You develop their assignments and evaluate their work. You make up tests and assign grades. You comment on students’ writing and provide feedback. And the way a teacher assesses students and provides feedback will greatly influence student learning. What activity could be more important?

So what can you, as the teacher, do? First, forget about all of the things you cannot change about your students or their circumstances and concentrate on what you can change: your teaching. You can always improve your instruction by making it more responsive to your students’ needs. Assessment is the tool you will use to involve your students in helping you to determine those needs. Second, to become the most effective teacher you can be, you must be familiar with assessment: what it is, how to do it, and most importantly, how to interpret and use the results. This book will help you to accomplish this.

Assessment

Because assessment is so important, we first need to explore its definition. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (1997) defines “assessment” as follows:

n 1: the act or instance of assessing; 2: an amount assessed.

Assessment is a relatively new word in education; even the dictionary does not include a definition relevant to education. The main source of information about what students had learned used to be the test. Now, teachers use many sources of information to determine what their students have learned, thus the more generic term, assessment.

Assessment can include any activity that serves to provide feedback to the teacher and students about what the student has learned. Examples are the more traditional test items (multiple-choice, short answer, or matching); constructed response items (where students respond to a prompt requiring them to organize their thoughts, take a stand and support it, provide an explanation); or a project or performance task (requiring students to write and give a speech, write an article or develop a brochure, design a lesson for younger students). The more variety used in assessment, the more complete the picture of what the students know and can do. In their book Understanding by Design, Wiggins and McTighe (1998) provide a very complete discussion of the different types of assessment, and how to choose a type appropriate for a given lesson. An important premise of their discussion is that the assessment is designed before the lesson. The teacher must determine what the students must be able to do at the conclusion of the lesson prior to determining the best instructional strategies to use to accomplish that goal. Standards for determining the quality of the student work must also be established.

Teaching versus Learning

In his book, Student-Involved Classroom Assessment (2001), Richard Stiggins provides an historical perspective on testing during the last century. The evolution from test to assessment has come about in a series of steps, and with a shift in paradigm—in the way we think about gathering and using information about students’ learning.

First, a test defined a fairly constrained set of questions. Each question had a correct answer, and a grade on the test was simple to compute. The purpose of the test was, in fact, to assign a grade to the student, and, in most cases, to rank order students. This grade served as a final, summative evaluation of the student’s performance and generally was determined by how the class had performed as a whole. If a student performed at the top of the class, that student received a high grade. This norm-referenced ranking meant that by definition, some students would fail. This process often caused a disconnect—the teachers taught, but according to the test results, students didn’t learn. Faced with low test scores, the teacher’s typical response might have been “But I taught this.” The next day, class would proceed as usual.

But some out-of-the-box thinker...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Why Do You Need to Know About Assessment?
• 2. What You Must Know about the Assessments You Administer
• 3. Essential Measurement Concepts
• 4. Preparing Your Students to Show What They Know
• 5. Threats to Validity
• 6. Using Assessment Results to Identify Instructional Needs
• Bibliography
• Index