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 CFAs1. 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 guide2. 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 33. 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, how 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