Assessment For Learning NCATE Clinic Lake Tahoe, California May 18, 2007 Katherine Bassett, Director of Educator Relations Peter Yeager, Director of Client Relations

Confidential & Proprietary 2 Focus of Presentation Assessment design Formative assessment Performance-based assessment

Confidential & Proprietary 3 Would you like to be on this plane? The pilot takes off from Los Angeles and heads toward New York City. Five and a half hours later, after taking no readings and making no adjustments to the original flight pattern, she lands the plane, contacts the tower, and asks, “Where are we?”

Confidential & Proprietary 4 Assessment: Formal and informal ways of eliciting evidence of intended student learning Assessment for Learning (AfL): Any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting student learning Formative (use of) Assessment: When the evidence of learning elicited by the assessment is actually used to adapt teaching to meet the learning needs Definitions

Confidential & Proprietary 5 The 3-legged stool Standards –What do you want to measure? Assessment –Why? What’s it purpose? How will the results be used? Scoring – How scored? How reported? How used?

Confidential & Proprietary 6 Cycles of assessment Long-cycle - Focus: between units - Length: four weeks to one year Medium-cycle - Focus: within units, between lessons - Length: one day to three weeks Short-cycle - Focus: within lessons - Length: five seconds to one hour Each with the potential to be used formatively!

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8 A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its destination by taking constant readings and making careful adjustments in response to wind, currents, weather, etc. An AfL teacher does the same: - Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time - Takes numerous readings along the way - Changes course as conditions dictate AfL – an analogy

Confidential & Proprietary 9 Assessments How we begin: The principles of evidence-centered design: Who are we measuring/assessing? What do we want to measure/assess? Why? What would be the evidence of the What in bullet 2? How could we capture that evidence?

Confidential & Proprietary 10 Results of assessment Like reading a thermometer –Not the cause or the cure for the learning –Cannot tell you if someone has a broken arm Doctors use multiple tools to establish a person’s well-being; teachers do the same thing

Confidential & Proprietary 11 Design assessment first Begin at the end 1.Start with the claims you want to make about students at the end of the lesson or lessons 2.Move from claims to supporting evidence for claims Designing lesson comes last 3. Once claims and evidence have been identified, then the teacher begins to plan instruction

Confidential & Proprietary 12 Evidence-Centered Assessment Design The Student Model WHO is being measured? What are the relevant characteristics of the individuals being assessed by this test? What do you want to be able to say about test takers AFTER they have taken the test? What kinds of information do you want the test to provide about these individuals?

Confidential & Proprietary 13 ECD The Evidence Model WHAT do you want to measure about these individuals? Of the knowledge, skills, and abilities described in the student model, which do you want to measure with this test? WHY do you want to measure these particular things? What would be convincing EVIDENCE of these kinds of knowledge, skill, and ability? What could test takers do or demonstrate, and in what form, that would convince you of their attainment of the level of knowledge, skill, and/or ability that you described in the student model?

Confidential & Proprietary 14 ECD The Task Model What kind of TASKS could you give the test takers to get the evidence you have described in #4? What are the limits or constraints on the test design (a test is a collection of “tasks”)? How long do you have to test people (in real time)? What is the maximum it can cost? (connected to time) What do you want to do with the information you gain from the test?

Confidential & Proprietary 15 Beyond ECD The Evaluation Model HOW do you want to measure the evidence? (What do you want to say about the evidence?) What are the standards (knowledge, skills, and abilities) being measured? What are the salient features of the standards? What is the purpose of the evaluation? (Summative, formative) How many levels of performance? Are levels appropriate for purposes of the assessment? What are the salient features of each level of performance? (Kinds of knowledge, ways of knowing, demonstrations of command) How do the features in one level relate to the ones in the adjacent level? What are typical characteristics of the evidence for each level of performance? How will the levels be described so that the differences between successful and unsuccessful performances are clear and explicit?

Confidential & Proprietary 16 Some ETS-developed Performance- based Assessments Licensure assessment items Praxis III National Board for Professional Teaching Standards assessments Take One! Pathwise Framework Observation program Pathwise Framework Induction program School Leadership Licensure Assessment Keeping Learning On Track

Confidential & Proprietary 17 Questions?