Assessment matters

a.     What is the role of assessment and evaluation in school improvement and measuring educational quality? 

School improvement is heavily based on accountability. At the national level, they hold the districts accountable for making sure schools meet state measures because there are certain benchmarks that must be met. If these benchmarks are not met, schools can be sanctioned because of the No Child Left Behind Act. The federal government requires each state to provide information in the following areas: They want data on students with special needs, the school demographics (language spoken and subgroups), and how many students graduated, or may not met the performance measures.  In the video, “ Cultivating Thriving Schools” Stetcher (2011) states that, “our education systems focuses on reading, math, and graduation rates and if these three or not met, those who imposes these measures would put sanction on these schools.” If sanctions are put on the school, teachers can be fired. Administrators can be fired or outside organizations can come in and take over the school. Therefore, the district holds the schools accountable for bring students score up to proficient and beyond. Administrators hold the teachers accountable for making sure that students’ achievement is met and students reach state standard.  Administrators evaluated teachers’ performance and how students perform on the end of the year assessments, in California that would be Star Testing or CMA for second language Learners. This is the way administrators keep teachers accountable.

Newton (2013) states, “the intent of accountability systems has been to measure students’ growth toward reaching academic standards and hold schools accountable for ensuring that students are learning and succeeding (p. 289)."

At my school they’re focus is on increasing the passing rate of our students in order to come out of program improvement. Most of our meeting has been dedicated to looking at test results, and looking at more effective ways of teaching children. As a school, we have looked at best practices to ensure everyone is using the same techniques across the board. We have taken inventory of our school resources and materials to see what is needed in order to reach our goals. Each grade level bring notes from their meeting to show that teachers having been making observations, analyzing the data, and discussion solutions.

Students test scores are brought to grade-level meeting and students work is analyze to see if there our any trends among classes, redirect teaching if necessary, reflect on teaching practices and discuss any concerns teachers may have about a student in particular or students.  Then, test scores our brought to our staff meeting and we as a school look at all students test score collaboratively and discuss and reflect and analyzing what trends are we seeing in the present school year and what models we don’t want to repeat from the previous school year that has shown not to be effective. Decisions are made based on these test scores and questions are asked, such as, why have comprehension scores only gone up by 3% when we have implemented this model? Adjustments are made after looking at school test scores based on individuals test and national test. Newton states, Newman (2013) stated, “Looking at assessments and its use, purpose is everything (p319)." These results are used to inform future teaching. After, we have taken a closer look at areas we show strength in and areas of improvement at our school.

District administrators, school adminstrators, heads of other programs come into our classrooms to see what we are teaching effectively. They are observing what strategies we have implemented in our classroom, and if these strategies are aligned across the school.  Teachers are evaluated on their effective teaching practices, and student engagement. If a teacher is not meeting these goals, coaches are appointed to the teacher in order to help develop these skills. As a school we do not want sanctions made against us or outside agencies to take over.

b.     What are your perspectives on the roles and trends related to assessment in education? 

My perspective on the roles and trends related to assessment in education are that assessments are very valuable. Assessments rather its summative or formative is essential when looking at students test score. Rather it is the whole students’ populations test scores; looking at assessment at grade-level or just look at you own classes test scores. Both assessments will display data on if a student has shown growth in a short period of time or over a long period of time in a specific academic area, but I feel that the district only focuses on summative assessments, like the Star Testing. This test doesn’t tell us the whole story about why certain students are not succeeding and meeting standards. There are other variables that can’t be seen on a test such as maybe the child did not eat that day. Therefore, they did not do their personal best on the test. Star Test scores doesn’t come back until the summer and the students you have in your class can’t benefit from this scores because they have moved on to another class or another school.

I feel that teachers have the information that is relevant to student’s immediate needs. Teachers have the information that is needed to guide future teaching and should be use more often than the test presently used. The Star Tests are content focused and center on rather the students understand the facts and how they interpret them. However, they are other things that can be measure as well. For instance, student’s behavior can be assessed such as, taking a look at how does the student get along with others in the classroom environment, small group setting etc.? Are there gaps in the student’s education? This may be a reason why the student is not thriving in the class. What is your repoire with the student? All of these things and more play apart in student achievement.

c.     What value do you see in both types of assessment and, specifically, the role you see assessment playing in your classroom?

 I use both assessments in my classroom. Raystad states, “Depending on the course and subject matter, the summative assessment could take the form of anything from a straightforward written exam to a final singing performance in a theatre class." (Raystad, 2013)

I use summative assessments after I have taught a concept or a unit. Sometimes, my summative assessments may be transformed into a formative assessment because students don’t do well. Therefore, the students’ need a better understanding of a topic and it gives them and opportunity to renew their understanding on that test and feel good about being successful. We all have bad days and don’t perform the way we want too. Thus, giving an assessment helps improve both student and teacher performance. My summative assessments could come in the form of group presentations, plays, quizzes, reflective journals, creating song in math, group projects etc. Newman (2013) states that, "summative assessments can also take the form of examinations, final exams, term papers, course projects, portfolios, or even final performances (p. 295)."  Summative assessments in the form of a unit test can be transform into a project based test where students can show case their knowledge by sketching events and that occurred in the unit and labeling them. Both summative and formative assessments can be used to get immediate feed back and redirect instructions. If the data indicates that majority of my students did not understand the lesson, I shared this information with my students. We look at the types of questions that were missed. We have discussions on why they missed these questions. The reason for this discussion is to have student’s actively be engage in their own learning and its gives me more direct feedback from my students on how the question was displayed, so they can be changed.

d.     Evaluate the role of both formative and summative assessment in the classroom.  How does each form of assessment support learning?  In what ways can the teacher use the data from assessments to influence learning in the classroom?

Rick Wormeli stated, "The best formative assessment actually involves descriptive feedback not just hey thank you for finishing on time” (Stenhousepublishers, 2010).  A formative assessment gives me immediate feedback. Then, I use this feedback for class discussion to improve student performance and to readjust my lessons. Summative lesson are use in my class to assess certain skills that different materials addressed and to see if the students actually mastered these skills at the end of a unit.

                        Formative assessment is always used when I am teaching long units. It could be a pop quiz, or a ticket out of the door with a question that need to be answered or a problem that need to be solved. My formative assessment could be given in a call and response format where I ask a question and the whole class responds. Both assessments support learning. It depends on do you want direct feedback or wait tell the end of the lesson to see if your students have mastered the skills taught. If students have not mastered the unit, I provided mini projects between each lesson in a unit. So, students can have another opportunity to learn the material. We discuss what assessments are going to be given at grade level. However, how you implement these assessments depends on the style of the teacher. We must keep in mind that all students do not learn the same. Therefore, by giving students different types of assessments allow the student to show their talents in other areas.

e. My next step in developing an assessment for the Common Core State Standard for my lesson will consist of students showing that they have mastered the skill of solving double-digit multiplication using based 10 blocks and 2 other models to check their work. Students will draw the representation of each problem and explain its relationships. Such as, ten ones equal 1 ten, ten tens equal 1 hundred.

Reference:

Newman, R. (2013). Teaching and learning in the 21st century: Connecting the dots. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Rystad, M. (2013). Assessment for learning [Video file].  Retrieve from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcLMlY6R7RM

Stecher, B. (2011). Thriving Schools [Video file]. Retrieved from http:// TEDxTalks - Dr. Brian Stecher - Cultivating Thriving Schools