Category: Assessment (Fall 2011)

Jan Morrison is President of TIES Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math).

The media is full of opinions about the nature and value of the use of assessment tools to guide education. More than occasionally, the focus pulls out attention to the use of such tools for pronouncements such as, “Failing Schools, Continuous Improvement” and more. Assessment ends up as a means to determine the viability of a school, student, program, etc rather than a diagnostic for to determine current status against some set of standards that have been vetted. The community, family or student involved is thus judged, labeled and eligible for “intervention.”

Imagine a scenario where assessment tools and instruments are in place in schools – classrooms as prescriptors of potential. While envisioning, craft a classroom where assessment is used in real-time, responds to student learning and is agile and nimble enough to transform as needed. As Dylan Wiliam of University of London would say, Tight But Loose. Pushing this notion, assessment would then provide the evidence about learning to adapt teaching to meet student needs in the moment and for the future. In the United States, we ascribe the term, Performance-based, to such assessment and then speak of it as highly improbable. Yet, the use of summative-based assessment tools has created the environment as mentioned above, one of failure. Setting aside the idea that performance-based assessment is improbable, what does this look like in practice and why should we move, as we are now, to such a basis for assessment?

Performance-based assessment pushes us to know why we are teaching what it is that we are teaching. We, as educators, have to clarify, understand and share the reasons for learning. It then is incumbent upon us to engineer effective and advancing classroom discussions, activities and tasks that provide the potential for the learner to demonstrate mastery, proficiency and competence on valued learning. At a performance-base level of operation, the learners become agents of their own education making decisions with the educator and not receiving them and swallowing them whole without understanding why they are learning what they are asked to learn. Finally, performance-based classrooms set the scene for students to become resources to and with each other rather than silo’ed competitors. Teaching includes incentives for collaboration with a deterministic process, not one that feels “loose” and operates minimally.

The United States is months from implementing the Common Core in English Language Arts and Mathematics. More than forty states have some legislation that ensures the Common Core will be implemented for all children. The two test design teams assure us that the assessments will be performance-based and demand a level of teaching that rids the classroom of the “teaching to the test” strategy. They also promise that learning is at the core of the mission. Concurrently, NAEP 2014 is being designed and constructed. This test which is widely used throughout our schools, will ask students to use “kits” and then respond to queries that are set up to test their proficiency in applying their understanding to novel situations. Although not demanded as tests for the Jewish day school world, they are instructive for all who engage youngsters in classroom settings. They provide the incentive we have needed to move from a punitive assessment world to one that sets standards, values performance-based tasks and learning and then sets in motion the need for students to continuously apply their learning to problems and activities that are novel, challenging and important.

Finally, the teaching profession is replete with mythology around the efficacy of assessment. It is clear that knowing that engagement with students is effective, and the availability of that knowledge in the moment of the engagement advances the teachers’ ability to ensure that this kind of pedagogy is adopted as “style.” People need to reflect on their experiences in systematic ways that build their accessible knowledge base and learn from mistakes, and teachers are no different. Delayed assessments and results do little to support this. We also know that putting new and novel knowledge to make it meaningful and effective requires vision and continuous practice. Performance-based assessment aids in this transformation, setting the landscape for scholarly discourse, inquiry and mastery rather than “sage on the stage.” Although much professional development abounds in the Jewish day school world, implementation of performance-based assessment instruments rarely accompanies these opportunities – so that little is sustained and advanced. The result is more professional development to advance the very same pedagogies year after year. Thus, before us is a challenge…. leverage the education assessments ready to be implemented across the country, find mechanisms for use of performance-base assessment in all classrooms so that teaching and learning are dynamic and, incentivize and reward application of knowledge to problems that are important to students, teachers, schools and the community at large – Assessment By Design.