Stiggins's vision for assessment is a difference between assessments of learning and for learning. He argues that schools have been too focused on the knowledge of students rather than monitoring their progress of learning. The students that were not to be left behind are now getting even further left behind because of the standardized assessments. He states that yes, there should be a balance between the two, but there should be more assessments that are tailored to the process instead of the end product.
Really the issue here is an issue of accountability. Here is a segment from his article:
"They (standardized tests) cannot inform the moment to moment, day to day, and week to week instructional decisions faced by students and teachers seeking to manage the learning process as it unfolds. They cannot diagnose student needs during learning, tell students what study tactics are or are not working or keep parents informed about how to support the work of their children. These kind of assessments require assessments for learning."
I think that these assessments are great, and needed in every classroom, but how would these assessments be monitored and track effectiveness? As teachers, arent our assessments for our students required to be measurable? I can just think of all the times I have written a mock lesson for a class or a lesson for my after school program and my professor or boss will ask me, "How is this measurable?" So the Should assessments not be measurable then? Not for our students, not administrators for teachers and not districts for school administrations? Should schools be more self monitored without input from the district? How effective could that type of self assessment be if that were the answer?
Anyway, this article reminded me of a story arc in the fourth season of The Wire where a former police officer starts working with students in a tracking program and sees results socially, and benefits the school because he took the most disruptive students out of their classrooms which lead to more teaching. If you have yet to watch The Wire at all then please stop whatever you are currently binge watching on netflix and watch The Wire. Here are some clips form that story arc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgG21qVnvEU
I think it is important to keep in mind that although this article talks about creating and implementing various forms of formative assessment and assessment for learning, we must also keep in mind that standardized state testing is not the only form of summative assessment that we should use. Teachers also create their own forms of summative assessments such as chapter tests. Some assessments that teachers create may also work as a hybrid of summative and formative assessments such as quizzes or performance tasks. I think that teacher created summative assessments is what will help you measure if your formative assessments are effective and are making the difference in your classrooms. We must diligent and learn to critically analyze each of these assessments and verify how well they align with standards and objectives.
ReplyDeleteAustin, you ask some good questions about implementation. Surely, if an assessment is being done, then something is being measured, however, knowing what to measure and how to measure it are less clear. I believe this is why the author mentioned needing an investment in the development of these assessment the size of the investments we currently have in our high-stakes assessments. I do have a hard time imagining what these assessments would look like, seeing as they appear to be distinct from the formative assessments used daily by teachers. Would these tests be high-stakes? Would their data be used for school comparisons? Who would see the results? Who would be involved in creating them? These are all things I would be interested to know.
ReplyDeleteAustin, I also think you bring up some great questions. But in addition to what Danielle and Edgar have mentioned, I think it is important to keep in mind the idea of “assessments for learning” not just “of learning.” For me the type of assessments that teacher perform should take into consideration both parts. When we assess for learning, we try to figure out whether or not our students understood what we were trying to teach them. Then the next step would be for teachers to use what they have learned and an additional day because students are not understanding, or moving forward to the next activity. In addition, assessment for learning is meant to internalize understanding for students, the ways in which they learn best, what their good at, what they need to improve and possible ways to do that. I think, Stiggins wanted to make the point that statewide testing is important because it measures some things, but it falls short in others. In other words, Teacher’s assessments should balance standardize test and together they should work to help us better understand where our students are.
ReplyDelete(I’m a HUGE fan of The Wire… I have the complete series on DVD)
ReplyDeleteAustin,
Thanks for the post! You bring up good questions regarding assessment, and while I was reading your third paragraph, I was thinking that even the objectives of a lesson have to be measurable. Yes, we do plan and differentiate assessments for our students, but everyday lessons should test and check for students’ understanding; the objectives have to be tied to the assessment and an overall lesson plan. We are all aware of the push to more and more testing. Thinking back to a conversation my mentor teacher from North Grand and I had about standardized testing, and she said that even though the state requires students to take a specific number of standardized tests for a year, it does not equal how many times during a year the students have to take the same test. There is the fall session, and also the spring session of the same standardized test students have to take. The Juniors have to take even more tests, so standardized testing is still demanded. Standardized testing falls short in many ways, but it is a way for the administrators to see how well a school is doing depending on a specific test and compare the test scores even nationwide.
Great now I have to watch the wire, Austin, I liked your post, I was a little unclear on what your position was, so hopefully im not off track with my comment, I think there are many kinds of assessments we utilize in the class everyday, I'd agree that sometimes the best forms of assessment aren't always 'measurable' in an obvious way, I think the informal assessments that occur can be very helpful, like in the Wire segment you shared, much of what they were doing appeared to be informal, except the guy in the back is taking notes, which suggests he was measuring it in some way, but I think that as was mentioned setting a clear objective can make any assessment measurable and can be translated into something meaningful for the students the teachers and the school.
ReplyDeleteHey Austin-
ReplyDeleteYour post reminds me of observations at IHSCA. Every one of their lessons had to produce something measurable, and had to be backed by standardized testing results (either from practice tests or the real ones). They could not do full class discussions because nothing tangible is produced at the end of the day. It seemed so limiting and stifled. I do believe that we have a responsibility, not only to our students, but to the community, to ensure we are effectively teaching them. We need to be held accountable and know what it is that is not working with our teaching. Assessments are great proof of that. That being said, I do believe there needs to be room for meaningful learning experiences, like discussions, that cannot be concretely measured.
Speaking of IHSCA and also answering your question on self-assessment, I remember Sabrina explaining the process on how she, and every other teacher there, got their lessons approved for teaching. As a refresher, all teachers needed to submit an outline of their and their students' week--a lesson plan for each day. The principal would review each weekly plan and decide if it fits under the agreed upon criteria. In my individual article, "Changing Classroom Practice" a mention was made to how difficult changes are to make when a teacher has been practicing a certain way for so long--things start to become engrained I guess. Well, to tie this all together I think schools should be able to self-assess and decide what would work best for that school's individual and unique student population. It seems districts/administrators and whoever else is responsible for standard-based testing have become stuck and incapable of changes. students need to be able to demonstrate their learning and that can be manifested in many (immesurable) ways.
ReplyDeleteStiggins brings up great points in his article as well as you do when it comes to assessment. I believe that assessment has become all about accountability and pin-pointing out those that succeed by rewarding them and punishing those that are not meeting state requirements. Your questions are great things that those in charge of education nationwide should consider. I believe the reason for these high-stakes testing is to check if students are learning what is expected from them and if educators are doing their "job" of drilling testing preparation into these children. We should know that not every student learns the same and not every student is the same so using some test to compare these things is to me no valuable.
ReplyDeleteI think your questions are great, but I also think they are questions that most, if not all, educators ask. Unfortunately teachers and the schools seem to not have the most power in order to answer these questions. The CPS pushes for these tests to be a major assessor of our students' learning, and even though we should be using them for learning. We should learn from the scores on how to help the current students, instead we look at the scores and think, "Okay, how will we change this for the next group of students," as if all hope was lost. If the students do not understand the material and fail the assessment we, as educators, should try to make changes in the way we teach those students in order to help them learn the material.
ReplyDeleteHey Austin,
ReplyDeleteGreat post and questions! To answer your question about making our formative assessments measurable, I believe that we only have to be able to provide descriptive feedback and allow the process to evolve from the assessment, rather than focus on giving a grade. A key factor of formative assessments is that there is no mark that goes down in the grade book for it. A good formative assessment is a rough draft for a paper, while the final paper may be a summative assessment that can be used for formative assessment in the process afterwards.
Austin, how am I supposed to write a thesis, pass all my classes, AND add The Wire to my binge watching schedule? I'm already watching American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, How to Get Away with Murder, and Game of Thrones. I do really want to watch The Wire though. I think you touch on something in your blog that is important. The Stiggins article does a good job of defining the difference between assessment of learning and assessment for learning, but does not come up with clear examples of how to go about assessments FOR learning. Yes, he states the students should be involved, but does not go into any specifics of what that looks like in practice. So in answer to your questions of how these would be measured, we don't know because he hasn't really come up with concrete examples of what it is teachers should do. As I kept reading hoping for some concrete examples, I realized the audience of this paper is not teachers, but politicians. Therefore, while he has my attention, he ultimately loses me in the article of how to go about with these assessments because the article falls into politics speak. By that I mean, "we really need to do this, this is important, but I'm slightly vague about what to do, so lets all just agree that the current way isn't working."
ReplyDeleteThe Stiggins article made me think that assessment, any type of assessment, should primarily be about learning and secondary about accountability. Instead it is the other way around. It doesn't matter if you are a student or a teacher, if the evaluating method is formative or summative, its main goal should not be to hold somebody accountable but to further learning. Actually that's what the goal or objective of education is all about.
ReplyDeleteHey Austin,
ReplyDeleteMy take away from the Stiggins article in terms of assessing "for learning" and "of learning" is that there is the misuse of formative assessment. He provides some good strategies that will enable teachers to provide their students the opportunity to demonstrate that they're engaging with the content and are pursuing it. For example, it would be beneficial if students knew where they stood in terms of their learning, as in having a reference to point of what they understand and what they don't understand.
As for accountability, I really appreciated the section where Stiggins explains who benefits from this instructional process. To me, it is the teacher's responsibility to enact these various methods in evaluation these two types of learning. From there, students will gain more control over their education, parents will feel more at ease knowing that their child is succeeding, which will in turn reflect back onto educators and administrators.
Nice post!
Saarah Mohammed
Hey Austin, great post.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the measurability of assessments, I take your point that assessments for learning are more difficult to track and measure. It is tough to indicate how many units of student confidence, for example, a student gets out of assessment. At the same time, I believe that assessments for learning can improve the more concrete assessments of learning. In other words, if you are doing the assessment for learning part right then those positive results will translate into better scores on assessments of learning. I agree with Stiggins that we need more assessment for learning, but I'd also argue to you that teachers already do assessment for learning everyday. A bellringer that challenges students to produce what they already know about the historical period that is about to be studied, for example, is not a formal assessment; nonetheless, it is an assessment by which a student reflects on her learning, and perhaps more importantly, an assessment that lets the teacher know what to teach the student in the lesson. The bellringer may not be a graded formal assessment but it certainly helps both the student and teacher participate in the types of learning that translate into good test scores.
Hi Austin-
ReplyDeleteYou bring up great points that advocate for a balance between standardized assessments and exams that are tailored to that form of knowing, and more authentic assessment geared towards measuring the progression of knowledge, or the journey of education; not just the end result. Talking about standardized tests leaves a bitter taste in my mouth most of the time, but I think it's just something we have to tolerate and do the best that we can with our students. The right balance of planning between students engaging in the topics we'd like them to through reading and writing and the planning for grammatical, comprehensive, and analysis should coincide in some ways. Yes, at the end of the day we are accountable for this balance and how we distribute it in our classroom. Some of Stiggens tips for assessment will help us do that I think.
Good afternoon, Austin.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure where you got the impression that the model of assessments for learning was not comparable with being measurable. I felt that Stiggins was not so much advocating for decreased quantifiable evidence, but that we as teachers simply needed to be more transparent about the objectives that our lessons were concerned with, how students will be measured on their production of artifacts demonstrating their knowledge of the task, and how we communicate to the student whether or not they were effective in their efforts. This was most evident to me when Stiggins wrote that teachers advanced assessment for learning by "understanding and articulating in advance of teaching the achievement targets that their students are to hit" (i.e. be transparent about your intentions before teaching the lesson). I think that this type of assessment for learning can be squared with the measurable aspect that you are concerned with. For instance, if we are to have an "increased emphasis on classroom formative assessment designed to assist learning," and we can agree that such a formative assessment may be one where students are to complete an in-class worksheet--let's just say this is one that highlights core concepts of a lesson (maybe it's to point out where irony is being developed in a novel)--that will be assessed by the teacher and handed back to students with descriptive feedback, then won't this type of assessment be both measurable and formative at the same time? In fact, when Stiggins remarks that "record keeping" is one such variable that is found in the environments that have the most achievement gains, I would think that the records would be on something that has been measured, on something deduced from observation.
I like how you bring up the issue of accountability. Having measurable assessments helps administrators confirm that you are indeed doing your job. So little of what we do actually gets noticed outside the classroom. What I mean by that is administrators and parents don’t always have the time to sit in on a class discussion and observe what you are teaching for themselves. Grades, numbers, and the like, help paint a picture for these parties instead of leaving them with a blank canvas. Nobody likes surprises, and tracking grade averages is faster and more efficient than most other alternatives.
ReplyDelete