Tested

Tested to the Limit

If you stopped by the small office conference room last week, you saw we were buried knee-deep in End of Course Assessments.  Students took hundreds of them during the week.  They were marked, labelled, collated, packed, and then shipped off to Minnesota for scoring on Friday.

During a week like that, our minds tend to ponder how much of today’s education revolves around testing.  We give a veritable alphabet soup of assessments: SATs, PSATs, ACTs, ECAs, and APs to name a few.  Add to that Achievement Series Exams, final exams, unit tests, chapter tests, and even daily quizzes, and you begin to wonder if there isn’t more testing than learning going on in schools today.

Alfie Kohn, the ever outspoken, often controversial, and always entertaining educator, once wrote, “Testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.”  It’s not hard to sympathize with Alfie, especially after a week like we just completed.

Test Yourself

Obviously, we have a need for assessing how well our students are doing.  We need to know if our teaching is translating into learning.  (Remember the “I taught my dog to whistle” cartoon?)  Interestingly enough, we aren’t as filled with indignation at the thought of “testing” when we are the ones designing and giving the tests.  The reality is that the more local the assessment, the better the chance of being able to make changes to instruction and help students.  This may help explain our split personality when it comes to our own assessments.

On the state and national level, I do see signs of hope on the horizon as well.  Good questions are being asked about assessment in the process of moving to the Common Core State Standards.  For example, those in charge are asking whether we should give only Assessments OF Learning, or whether we should spend much more time on Assessment FOR Learning.  This is the difference between summative and formative assessments.

At the school level, we also should continue to ask ourselves if it is possible to change our views of assessments.  I would advocate adding a third category:  Assessment AND Learning.  The difference is more than changing a preposition to a conjunction.  It is a change of perspective of what assessment is and how it looks.  Assessment and Learning means moving away from traditional tests and moving toward designing assessment tasks.

Interestingly, you already do much of this.  You tend to call these “assignments,” so what I am advocating might be only a slight shift in your thinking.  At the point you need to assess student progress of knowledge and/or skills, you can design a task that measures student growth and engages them in deepening their understanding of the content. In the classroom, it might look something like this:

•  Design the Assessment Task: The task should be important.  It should engage students, and it should be extended.  The Common Core State Standards, both PARCC and Smarter Balance, are talking about 1-3 day tasks.  As much as possible, these tasks should involve higher order thinking.  Students must be required to analyse, synthesize, and apply skills and knowledge that you have been teaching and they have been learning.  Check the Depth of Knowledge chart in TEDS for ideas about tasks and key questions to be answered in the task.
• Include Literacy Skills:  Include at least one extended text and several shorter texts.  (These should be appropriate in complexity and content for the students in your class.)  CCSS guidelines say these texts could and should include a variety of formats: articles, editorials, excerpts, poetry, lyrics, and even film, art, music, or audio clips.  During the assessment, students should read, write, and think—the most important literacy skill!
• Scaffold Students: Many, even most, students won’t be able to complete the tasks successfully at first without support.  Show them exemplars of quality work, model the thinking that needs to take place, have them work collaboratively on some parts of these tasks, and over time transition to more independent work.  The Gradual Release Model (I Do, We Do, You Do) works well in a single lesson and over the course of a school year.
• Assess on Content and Proficiency: The task is an assessment tool.  You need to find ways to assess how well students have mastered the content and/or skills that are important to your class.  Rubrics might be appropriate for much or all of the assessment.  This approach can be used in addition to your traditional assessment.  As time goes on, assessment tasks as advocated in CCSS may replace many of your traditional tests.  These tasks provide a way for students to deepen their understanding of your content and a way for you to assess student learning at the application level.  They are Assessment and Learning.

If I understand correctly, this is the approach both the Common Core State Assessment consortiums will take in assessing our students in the near future.  If we are going to have our students ready for these new standards and assessments, we need to give them many opportunities to practice throughout the school year.

Test Drive

The nice thing is that many, many of you already have assignments similar to these in place.  The challenge is to implement assessment tasks more widely across the curriculum.  The first step is to try them out.  Find the place or places where these anchor assignments fit naturally into your current plans, and then give it a test drive next semester.  Find ways to tweak or expand a current assignment to make it an assessment of student learning as well.  If the assessment works, keep using it.  If it doesn’t, make adjustments.  Over time you will develop a toolbox of highly engaging assessment tasks. 

When you do, “testing” will change from something you “have to do” to something that you and the students look forward to.  Hopefully, students and teachers will come to feel a little less tested by and testy about the assessment process.

Have a great week, Southeastern.

Phil