The Power of…

The Power of Common Assessment “One of the most powerful, high-leverage strategies for improving student learning available to schools is the creation of frequent, common, high-quality formative assessments by teachers who are working collaboratively to help a group of students develop agreed-upon knowledge and skills”  Fullan, 2005a; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Reeves, 2004; Schmokler,2003; Stiggins, 2005, Learning By Doing page 55

Why Common Assessments? 1. Efficiency 2 Equity & Fairness 3. Effective Monitoring 4. Inform teacher Practice 5 Develop Team Capacity 6. Collective Response

Steps for Developing CFAs 1. Examine pacing guide-determine logical time to administer an common formative assessment 2. Determine power standards/essential learning targets to be assessed 3. Determine what method would be the best for assessing the identified standards/learning targets 4. Create assessment 5. Determine what is proficient 6. Develop guidelines for administering assessment 7. Score the assessment 8. Compiling the results

Steps 1 and 2 1. Start with pacing guide 2. Determine power standards/essential learning targets to be assessed -Use your pacing guide and unwrapped standards to determine what is to be assessed -Revisit your unwrapped standard(s)

Step 3 3. Determine what method would be the best for assessing the identified standards/learning targets -Knowing, Doing, Going Beyond -Format of assessment (selected response, constructed response, product or performance) -Don’t have to start from scratch!!!!

Step 4 4. Create assessment -Ensure alignment between unwrapped standard and assessment -Working smart -Using current resources -Combining pieces to make it work -Use of expert work DON”T KILL YOURSELVES!!!!

Steps 5  What is proficient?  Needs to be determined in advance of giving the assessment  In a standards-based system, students are not assessed in comparison to each other but to meeting the skills and knowledge embedded in the standards  Scoring needs to be determined to guide future instruction

What is proficient?  Based on the standard you unpacked, h ow would you determine what is proficient in this assessment?

Step 6  Uniform administration of assessment  Team needs to articulate guidelines for how to uniformly administer assessment  Common time frame  Common directions  Common agreement on level of teacher assistance Apples or oranges but not both

CFA Rubric  Alignment to Standards  Scoring  Administration  Formative

Step 7  Score the assessment.  This can be done as a team or independently depending on the assessment.  Make sure you use the team’s definition of proficiency when scoring the assessment.

Step 8  Compiling the results  Examples of ways to compile results for team discussion  Examples of ways to share results with students