Classroom assessments that serve as meaningful sources of information don't surprise students. Instead, these assessments reflect the concepts and skills that the teacher emphasized in class, along with the teacher's clear criteria for judging students' performance.
These concepts, skills, and criteria align with the teacher's instructional activities and, ideally, with state or district standards.
Students see these assessments as fair measures of important learning goals. And if it is not important enough to teach, then there's little justification for assessing it. The best classroom assessments also serve as meaningful sources of information for teachers, helping them identify what they taught well and what they need to work on.
Gathering this vital information does not require a sophisticated statistical analysis of assessment results. Teachers need only make a simple tally of how many students missed each assessment item or failed to meet a specific criterion. State assessments sometimes provide similar item-by-item information, but concerns about item security and the cost of developing new items each year usually make assessment developers reluctant to offer such detailed information.
Once teachers have made specific tallies, they can pay special attention to the trouble spots—those items or criteria missed by large numbers of students in the class.
In reviewing these results, the teacher must first consider the quality of the item or criterion. Perhaps the question is ambiguously worded or the criterion is unclear. Perhaps students mis-interpreted the question. Whatever the case, teachers must determine whether these items adequately address the knowledge, understanding, or skill that they were intended to measure.
If teachers find no obvious problems with the item or criterion, then they must turn their attention to their teaching. When as many as half the students in a class answer a clear question incorrectly or fail to meet a particular criterion, it's not a student learning problem—it's a teaching problem.
Whatever teaching strategy was used, whatever examples were employed, or whatever explanation was offered, it simply didn't work. Analyzing assessment results in this way means setting aside some powerful ego issues. They just didn't learn it! Can effective teaching take place in the absence of learning? Certainly not. Some argue that such a perspective puts too much responsibility on teachers and not enough on students.
Shouldn't students display initiative and personal accountability? Indeed, teachers and students share responsibility for learning. Even with valiant teaching efforts, we cannot guarantee that all students will learn everything excellently.
Only rarely do teachers find items or assessment criteria that every student answers correctly. A few students are never willing to put forth the necessary effort, but these students tend to be the exception, not the rule. If a teacher is reaching fewer than half of the students in the class, the teacher's method of instruction needs to improve.
And teachers need this kind of evidence to help target their instructional improvement efforts. If assessments provide information for both students and teachers, then they cannot mark the end of learning. Instead, assessments must be followed by high-quality, corrective instruction designed to remedy whatever learning errors the assessment identified see Guskey, To charge ahead knowing that students have not learned certain concepts or skills well would be foolish.
Teachers must therefore follow their assessments with instructional alternatives that present those concepts in new ways and engage students in different and more appropriate learning experiences. High-quality, corrective instruction is not the same as reteaching, which often consists simply of restating the original explanations louder and more slowly.
Instead, the teacher must use approaches that accommodate differences in students' learning styles and intelligences Sternberg, Although teachers generally try to incorporate different teaching approaches when they initially plan their lessons, corrective instruction involves extending and strengthening that work. In addition, those students who have few or no learning errors to correct should receive enrichment activities to help broaden and expand their learning.
Materials designed for gifted and talented students provide an excellent resource for such activities. Developing ideas for corrective instruction and enrichment activities can be difficult, especially if teachers believe that they must do it alone, but structured professional development opportunities can help teachers share strategies and collaborate on teaching techniques Guskey, , b.
Faculty meetings devoted to examining classroom assessment results and developing alternative strategies can be highly effective. District-level personnel and collaborative partnerships with local colleges and universities offer wonderful resources for ideas and practical advice.
Occasionally, teachers express concern that if they take time to offer corrective instruction, they will sacrifice curriculum coverage. Because corrective work is initially best done during class and under the teacher's direction, early instructional units will typically involve an extra class period or two.
Teachers who ask students to complete corrective work independently, outside of class, generally find that those students who most need to spend time on corrective work are the least likely to do so. As students become accustomed to this corrective process and realize the personal benefits it offers, however, the teacher can drastically reduce the amount of class time allocated to such work and accomplish much of it through homework assignments or in special study sessions before or after school.
By pacing their instructional units more flexibly, most teachers find that they need not sacrifice curriculum coverage to offer students the benefits of corrective instruction. To become an integral part of the instructional process, assessments cannot be a one-shot, do-or-die experience for students. Instead, assessments must be part of an ongoing effort to help students learn. And if teachers follow assessments with helpful corrective instruction, then students should have a second chance to demonstrate their new level of competence and understanding.
This second chance helps determine the effectiveness of the corrective instruction and offers students another opportunity to experience success in learning. Writing teachers have long recognized the many benefits of a second chance. They know that students rarely write well on an initial attempt. Teachers build into the writing process several opportunities for students to gain feedback on early drafts and then to use that feedback to revise and improve their writing.
Teachers of other subjects frequently balk at the idea, however—mostly because it differs from their personal learning experiences. Because of the very high stakes involved, each must get it right the first time. But how did these highly skilled professionals learn their craft? The first operation performed by that surgeon was on a cadaver—a situation that allows a lot of latitude for mistakes.
Similarly, the pilot spent many hours in a flight simulator before ever attempting a landing from the cockpit. Such experiences allowed them to learn from their mistakes and to improve their performance.
Similar instructional techniques are used in nearly every professional endeavor. Only in schools do student face the prospect of one-shot, do-or-die assessments, with no chance to demonstrate what they learned from previous mistakes.
All educators strive to have their students become lifelong learners and develop learning-to-learn skills. Envision students have multiple opportunities to engage in this kind of learning.
In both tenth grade and then again as seniors, they are asked to assemble a portfolio of their best work, which they must "defend," dissertation-style, to an audience of educators, peers, and community members. They give similar presentations throughout their high school years, reflecting on each experience to improve the next one. As students revise their portfolios, incorporating feedback from teachers and peers, they hone not only critical thinking and analysis skills, but also communication skills.
As seniors, they must pass the "College Success Portfolio" defense in order to graduate, and many of them go through multiple revisions and attempts before successfully passing. By talking about the project, I deepened my own knowledge of the math we were learning. Talking about their own learning -- articulating it, reflecting on it, internalizing it -- engages students in the kind of assessment that continually reinforces skills, deepens knowledge, and prepares them for the future.
Having students play an active role in this step is distinctive for two reasons: 1. One of our graduates describes Deeper Learning this way: "Deeper learning is when a student learns something beyond the content, when they are able to apply their experiences, or knowledge gained in other classes, to what they are doing.
As another graduate describes it: "Being put in a position to articulate a concept to an audience takes greater comprehension than just learning the idea for yourself. We think assessments have gotten a bad rap over the years—perhaps for good reason, perhaps not. In this article, we explore different ways that assessments can play a crucial and positive role in supporting successful learning. Quality assessments can.
By approaching the topic of assessment more broadly, school and district leaders can help students and their parents to understand better the benefits of assessment.
A research review concluded that practice testing and distributed practice, or practicing over longer periods of time, were two of the most effective strategies to improve long-term recall [i]. Practice testing is a form of retrieval practice—the act of calling information to mind. Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is what teachers do in their classrooms to gather information about how students are learning.
It can be formal, like a quiz, or informal such as a verbal question and answer session with students. Teachers can incorporate formative assessments such as these into both traditional and project-based learning classrooms across all content areas. Teachers must understand what students know, what they can do, and what they still need to learn.
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