1. Curriculum and Assessment

2. Assessment for Learning
Assessment for learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.
Assessment for learning involves the use of classroom assessment to improve learning.

3. Key Features Central to Assessment for Learning
It is embedded in the teaching and learning process
Shares learning goals with pupils
Helps pupils to know and recognize the standards to aim for
Provides feedback which leads pupils to identify what they should do next
Has a commitment that every pupil can improve
Involves both teacher and pupils reviewing and reflecting on pupils’ performance and progress
Involves pupils in self-assessment

4. Connecting Assessment to Instruction
Three types of decisions using assessment results:
Instructional placement decisions: What the student knows and where he/she should be
Formative evaluation decisions: monitor a student’s learning while instruction is underway
Diagnostic decisions: which difficulties account for the student’s inadequate progress in order to remediate
Assessment criteria to address curriculum needs:
Measure important learning outcomes
Address all three purposes of assessment
Provide clear descriptions of student performance linked to instructional actions
Compatible with a variety of instructional models
Easily administered, scored, and interpreted
Communicate the goals of learning to teachers and students
Generate accurate, meaningful information

5. Curriculum Instruction Assessment CIA Loop
Each of the three elements is equally important for effective instruction

6. Research-based Principles of Assessment for Learning
Part of effective planning
Focuses on how students learn
Central to classroom practice
A key professional skill
Is sensitive and constructive
Fosters motivation
Promotes understanding of goals and criteria
Helps learners know how to improve
Develops the capacity for self assessment
Recognizes all educational achievement

7. Rethinking Assessment and Its Role in Educational Reform
In the global economy of the 21st century students need to understand the basics, think critically, analyze, and make inferences. They must be able to interpret, access, and use information to make decisions. Consequently we must change assessment strategies to tie assessment design and content to new outcomes and purposes for assessment.
Assessment reform is a means of setting more appropriate targets for students, focusing staff development efforts, encouraging curriculum reform, and improving instruction and instructional materials.
The notion that learning comes about by the accretion of little bits is outmoded learning theory. Current models contend that learners gain understanding when they construct their own cognitive maps of the inter-connections among concepts and facts.

8. Matching Assessments to the Purposes of Assessment
Match the assessment method to the achievement purpose and target
Specify illustrative tasks that require students to demonstrate certain skills and accomplishments that demonstrate student mastery of the desired outcomes
Specify the criteria and standards for judging student performance on task selected
Develop a reliable rating process that allows different raters at different points in time to obtain the same results
Avoid pitfalls that threaten reliability and validity
Collect evidence/data showing that the assessment is reliable and valid
Ensure consequential validity
Use test results to refine assessment and improve curriculum and instruction
Sound assessment begins when the content of the assessment is defined (the student standards or goals to be assessed) and the purpose for the assessment is clearly stated.
There are two purposes for assessment:
1. To determine if students have acquired specific knowledge or skills
2. To diagnose student strengths and weaknesses and plan appropriate instruction
Assessments should be well matched with the full range of goals for student performance

9. Guiding Principals for Addressing the Accountability Challenges
High stakes accountability emphasizes the importance of collecting, analyzing, and using different data to measure student learning and to plot future education. In order to harness the value of data-driven decision making, to empower the learning community and improve schools research outlines seven guiding principles:
Vision – all participants must be informed and engaged in the process. There must be a common definition of accountability with realistic expectations and the use of data should be part of the overall school vision
Community – accountability must be shared among all participants
Professional Development – training must be provided in order that the staff and administrator understands how collecting, analyzing, and using data apply to measuring student learning. Curriculum mapping is one means to that end
Governance – placing student learning at the heart of the enterprise
Integrity – stand and deliver, mirror the dynamics of data driven behavior
Judgment – expect the best, forget the rest. High expectations of the staff as well as the students
Assessment – speak in data, harness its power. Visualize, numbers in graphs, maps and charts to be seen in relationship to each other

10. Curriculum Concept of Alignment
The concepts of alignment refers to the degree of match between test content and the subject area content identified through state academic standards.
The analysis of alignment requires a two step process:
A systematic review of standards
A systematic review of test items/tasks
As standards are developed the issue of how achievement will be measured should be a constant consideration.
As large scale assessment becomes more visible to the public the roles of reliability and validity come to the fore
Content representativeness or alignment is intricately tied to evidence of construct validity
One of the core concepts for effective curricular change is alignment. It is achieved when the parts of the whole are seen in relationship to each other.
For alignment the following aspects of the curriculum must be kept in focus:
Goals, Purposes, Outcomes, Objectives
Delivery system, Instruction, Materials, Organization
Assessment, Evaluation/Testing, Measurement, Monitoring

11. Data Analysis: An Educators Fear
Statistical strategies, not gut feelings form the hallmark of good instructional decisions
Few things are more feared than the thought of statistical analysis. Statistics is seen by most as a formal domain of advanced mathematics
The educators fear of statistics likely stems from a variety of factors which lack the following four important components:
Instruction of statistics does not emphasize the relevance of data to the day-to-day lives of principals and teachers
It does not fully integrate current technology into the teaching and learning of statistics
Few if any statistics courses are designed for students enrolled in educational leadership
Many statistics courses taught in colleges of education focus a major part of time on inferential statistics as a tool to improve problem analysis, student evaluation, data-based decision making and report preparation

12. Steps for Easing the Use of Data
Data collection is not the most difficult task in data driven decision making. The following steps can make data management easier and more efficient.

13. Better Data, Better Learning
The best data for providing feedback for both students and teachers is the:
Periodic Progress Monitoring: performed three to ten times per year
Daily Progress Monitoring: performed continuously for daily, even hourly feedback
This type of data should be collected consistently by teachers and used as part of their growth plan for improving instruction collectively and individually with students

14. (Newman, Griffin, and Cole, 1989)
“Instead of giving the children a task and measuring how well they do or how badly they fail, one can give the children the task and observe how much and what kind of help they need in order to complete the task successfully. In this approach the child is not assessed alone. Rather, the social system of the teacher and child is dynamically assessed to determine how far along is has progressed.”
(Newman, Griffin, and Cole, 1989)
Leaders succeed when armed with knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to overcome obstacles. Understanding how to use data and its potential to inform decisions is a guiding factor in today’s educational arena