Common Formative Assessments

1. CFA Common Formative Assessments * (Brief Summary/60 minutes) Math Steering Committee – 10/15/10

2. Common Formative Assessments: The Power of AssessmentsFor Learning Presented by The Leadership and Learning Center www.LeadandLearn.com (866)-399-6019

3. Essential Questions • What are common formative assessments? • How do they connect to other powerful instruction and assessment practices?

4. Essential Questions • What are the components of a quality common formative assessment? • What are the benefits of using common formative assessments to both teachers and students?

5. Our Learning Objectives • Understand how common formative assessments are the centerpiece of an integrated standards and assessment system. • Improve our assessment literacy through deeper understanding of the assessment-design process.

6. Why are CFAs the centerpiece? 1. DATA - driven (academic!) priorities 2. GOALS: that are measurable/tied to an assessment 3. TEAMWORK that produces short-termassessmentresults …Anchored by a GUARANTEED & VIABLE CURRICULUM

7. CFAs are a large part of our Data Team workload • SRBI interventions • (CFA) Collaborative Scoring of student work • (CFA) Using Data to inform our instruction. • Collaborative Lesson Planning

8. Our Learning Objectives • Brief overview of CFAs • Create a first-draft common formative assessment for use in any grade and content area.

9. Compelling Question • What are effective schools doing to achieve dramatic results in student learning?

10. Common Findings inSuccessful Schools • Formed a Professional Learning Community • Focused on student work (through assessment) • Changed their instructional practice accordingly to get better results • Did all this on a continuing basis M. Fullan, “The Three Stories of Education Reform,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 2000.

11. Professional Learning Communities • Four Essential Questions: • What do all students need to know and be able to do? • How do we teach so that all students will learn? • How will we know if they have learned it? • What will we do if they don’t know or if they come to us already knowing? R. DuFour and R. Eaker, Professional Learning Communities At Work, 1998

12. The Big Picture ! How Do All The Powerful Practices Connect?

13. Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together Standards and Assessment Effective Teaching Strategies Accountability for Learning Data-Driven Decision Making

14. How Powerful Practices Work Together Effective Teaching Strategies

15. The Power Of COMMON Assessments “Schools with the greatest improvements in student achievement consistently used common assessments.” D.B. Reeves, Accountability In Action, 2004

16. What Are Common Assessments? • “Not standardized tests, but rather teacher-created, teacher-owned assessments that are collaboratively scored and that provide immediate feedback to students and teachers.” D.B. Reeves, CEO, The Leadership and Learning Center

17. Data Teams: The Mechanism For Measuring Progress • Collect and chart data and results. • Analyze strengths and obstacles. • Set S.M.A.R.T. goal for student improvement. • Select effective teaching strategies. • Determine results indicators. Data Teams Process, The Leadership and Learning Center

18. Nine Effective Teaching Strategies • Similarities and Differences • Summarizing and Note Taking • Effort and Recognition • Homework and Practice • Nonlinguistic Representation • Cooperative Learning • Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback • Generating and Testing Hypotheses • Cues, Questions, Advance Organizers R.J. Marzano, D.J. Pickering, J.E. Pollock, Classroom Instruction That Works, 2001

19. Two Interdependent Practices Learning Centered Common Formative Assessments Data Teams

20. Powerful PracticesProduce Results! Improvement in student achievement on all assessment measures!

21. The Two Tools of Assessment • “No single assessment can meet everyone’s information needs…To maximize student success, assessment must be seen as an instructional tool for use while learning is occurring, and as an accountability tool to determine if learning has occurred. Because both purposes are important, they must be in balance.” NEA: Balanced Assessment: Key to Accountability and Improved Student Learning, 2003

22. Alignment of Assessments • Alignment of all assessment measures—classroom, common, district, and state—provides predictive value of how students are likely to do on the next level of assessment in time for teachers to make instructional adjustments! • In this way, assessment is truly informing instruction!

23. Talk It Over! • What benefits do you see in deliberately aligning powerful instruction and assessment practices to improve student learning? • Record any specific questions you would you like to discuss further.

24. Why Do Educators Assess? • “They want to know if, and to what degree, students are making progress toward explicit learning goals.” • “The true purpose of assessment must be, first and foremost, to inform instructional decision making.” L. Ainsworth and D. Viegut, Common Formative Assessments, 2006, p. 21

25. Group Discussion • Read independently (p. 18-22) • Make notes Q & A and discussion

26. Great Educators • “…use assessment data to make real-time decisions and to restructure their teaching accordingly.” D. B. Reeves, Accountability for Learning: How Teachers and School Leaders Can Take Charge, 2004, p. 71

27. Assess More Often • A number of short assessments given over time will provide a better indication of a student’s learning than one or two large assessments given in the middle and at the end of the grading period. Robert Marzano, Richard Stiggins, Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam, W. James Popham, and Douglas B. Reeves

28. Important Distinctions Assessment OF Learning Assessment FOR Learning

29. Assessment OF Learning • Summative assessment for unit, quarter, semester, grade level, or course of study • Provides “status report” on degree of student proficiency or mastery relative to targeted standard(s) S. L. Bravmann, “Assessment’s ‘Fab Four’” Education Week, March 17, 2004, p. 56

30. Assessment FOR Learning • Formative: given before and during the teaching process • Diagnostic: intended to be used as a guide to improve teaching and learning • Answers key questions: Do students possess critical pre-requisite skills and knowledge? Do students already know some of the material that is to be taught? S. L. Bravmann, “Assessment’s ‘Fab Four’” Education Week, March 17, 2004, p. 56

31. Conclusion • If we do a good job in our assessments for learning, then the results of our assessment of learning will surely follow!

32. What Are Common Formative Assessments? • Assessments for learning administered to all students in grade level or course several times during semester, trimester, or year • Items collaboratively designed by participating teachers • Items represent essential (Priority) standards only • Items aligned to district and state tests • Results analyzed in Data Teams in order to differentiate instruction L. Ainsworth and D. Viegut, Common Formative Assessments, 2006.

33. Common Formative Assessments Please read bulleted summary in supporting documents, pp. 111-113.

34. Group Discussion p. 111-113, Common Formative Assessments: A Summary

35. Five Key Benefits of Formative Assessments • Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success (rubrics and exemplars) • Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning • Providing feedback that moves learners forward D. Wiliam and M. Thompson, “Integrating Assessment With Instruction: What Will It Take to Make It Work?,” The Future of Assessment: Shaping Teaching and Learning, C. Dwyer, ed., 2007

36. Five Key Benefits of Formative Assessments • Activating students as instructional resources for one another • Activating students as the owners of their own learning D. Wiliam and M. Thompson, “Integrating Assessment With Instruction: What Will It Take to Make It Work?,” The Future of Assessment: Shaping Teaching and Learning, C. Dwyer, ed., 2007

37. Research Support • “Research suggests that, if done well, genuine ‘assessments for learning’ can produce among the largest achievement gains ever reported for educational interventions.” L. Olson, “’Just-in-Time’ Tests Change What Classrooms Do Next,” Education Week, May 2, 2007, p. 22.

38. Formative Assessment “In other words, formative assessment, effectively implemented, can do as much or more to improve student achievement than any of the most powerful instructional interventions (such as) intensive reading instruction, one-on-one tutoring, and the like.” L. Darling-Hammond and J. Bransford, eds. Preparing Teachers for a Changing World, 2005, p. 277

39. Research Support • “In reviewing 250 studies from around the world, published between 1987 and 1998, we found that a focus by teachers on assessment for learning, as opposed to assessment of learning, produced a substantial increase in students’ achievement.” P. Black and D. Wiliam, “Assessment and Classroom Learning,” Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy, and Practice, 1998, 5(1), pp. 7-73.

40. Research Support • “Reviews of research in this area by Natriello (1987) and Crooks (1988) were updated by Black and Wiliam (1998) who concluded that regular use of classroom formative assessment would raise student achievement by 0.4 to 0.7 standard deviations—enough to raise the United States to the top five in international rankings.” D. Wiliam, “Content Then Process: Teacher Learning Communities in the Service of Formative Assessment,” Unpublished Manuscript, 2007

41. Achievement Gains Associated With Number of Assessments Over 15 weeks Source: R.L. Bangert-Drowns, J. A. Kulik, and C. C. Kulik (1991); reported in R. J. Marzano’s, The Art and Science of Teaching, ASCD, 2007

42. Research Support • “Persuasive empirical evidence shows that these (properly formulated formative classroom assessments) work; clearly, teachers should use them to improve both teaching and learning.” W. J. Popham, Emeritus Professor, UCLA Graduate School of Education, Education Leadership, 2006, 64(3), pp. 86-87.

43. Assessment of Only Highest Priority Standards • “It is critical that all of the assessed standards be truly significant. From an instructional perspective, it is better for tests to measure a handful of powerful skills accurately than it is for tests to do an inaccurate job of measuring many skills.” W. J. Popham, Test Better, Teach Better, 2003, p. 143

44. BREAK ???

45. 3 – Part CFA(see template) • 1.) Selected Response (multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the blank, etc…) • 2.) Constructed Response (open-ended, short answer, etc…) • 3.) Essential Questions/Big Ideas