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Assessments
Ask a student what content their teachers consider most important in a course or grade level, and the student will likely answer “It’s on the test.” Student assessments should serve as levers and magnets to inform the teaching and learning process and promote desired learning experiences.
The main purposes of assessment are 1) to provide feedback that supports, guides, and improves the teaching and learning processes and results and 2) to provide acceptable evidence that determines whether intended learning targets have been achieved at established levels (e.g., “proficiency”). Student assessments should not be given primarily to generate and assign a grade.
Teachers today must be assessment literate, which means they have developed the abilities to gather dependable student data; examine student data and make sense of it; and then make changes in their teaching based on the data (Stiggins).
An important part of the teacher’s role is to make sure there is an agreement, or match, that exists between the curriculum (the written curriculum), instruction (the taught curriculum), and assessment (the tested curriculum). This is referred to as instructional alignment.
Student assessment is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing relevant information to make judgments and inferences about the quality of student learning. Assessment is an essential ongoing component of instruction that guides the learning process; it differs from testing in that it usually involves a more comprehensive process based on multiple indicators and sources of evidence.
Assessments necessarily serve a range of purposes, which can generally be categorized as diagnostic, formative, or summative. Formative assessments are the ongoing and diagnostic assessments that provide information to guide and improve the learning process and results during a learning cycle (e.g. unit); Formative assessments are often referred to as “assessment FOR learning.” Summative assessments are periodic culminating assessment that provide information to measure and communicate a general level of student achievement at the conclusion of a learning cycle (e.g., course or grade level). Summative assessments are often referred to as “assessment OF learning.”
For more information about assessment purposes, see Formative and Summative Assessment Purposes
The Grand Island Public Schools strives to provide a balanced, multidimensional assessment program in grades K-12. This requires assessing both knowing and doing.
Structured response assessments include selected response and constructed response items, which are designed to measure knowledge and understanding. Structured responses are demonstrations that help students show what they know and understand. These types of assessments require students to reproduce, select (choose), or construct a response.
Performance assessments engage students in thoughtfully using knowledge and skills to generate a product, performance, or some form of process-oriented communication. This type of assessment measures the application of knowledge and understanding (“doing”). Performance tasks can represent complex demonstrations of understanding and performance that show what students know and can do in meaningful contexts. Such assessments require students to generate, rather than choose or reproduce, a response. Performance tasks are structured activities requiring multiple responses to challenging questions or problems.
For more information about assessment types, see Types of Summative Assessments
Performance assessments are based on observations and judgments, which require the use of some type of scoring guide, most often a rubric. A rubric is an effective tool for describing and measuring the quality of students’ performance and work. Rubrics consist of a matrix with a multilevel set of performance criteria (e.g., voice, organization) and performance standards (e.g., proficient, advanced). Because assessors must discriminate among different levels of performance, the narrative included in a scoring guide must clearly communicate the desired performance qualities and characteristics. Performance tasks can be scored using either a holistic scoring process (a single score based on the overall impression of the product or performance) or an analytical scoring process (each trait receives a separate score).For more information about assessment-related concepts, see Assessment-Related Concepts