Common Formative

Assessments

CFA

* (Brief Summary/60 minutes)

Math Steering Committee – 10/15/10

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Common Formative Assessments: The Power of Assessments

For Learning

Presented by

The Leadership and Learning Center

www.LeadandLearn.com

(866)-399-6019

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Essential Questions

What are common formative assessments?

How do they connect to other powerful instruction and assessment practices?

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Essential Questions

What are the components of a quality common formative assessment?

What are the benefits of using common formative assessments to both teachers and students?

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Our Learning ObjectivesUnderstand how common formative

assessments are the centerpiece of an integrated standards and assessment system.

Improve our assessment literacy through deeper understanding of the assessment-design process.

Why are CFAs the centerpiece?

1. DATA - driven (academic!) priorities

2. GOALS: that are measurable/tied to an assessment

3. TEAMWORK that produces short-term assessment results

…Anchored by a

GUARANTEED & VIABLE CURRICULUM

CFAs are a large part of our Data Team workload

SRBI interventions

(CFA) Collaborative Scoring of student work

(CFA) Using Data to inform our instruction.

Collaborative Lesson Planning

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Our Learning Objectives

Brief overview of CFAs

Create a first-draft common formative

assessment for use in any grade and content area.

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Compelling Question

What are effective schools doing to achieve dramatic results in student learning?

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Common Findings inSuccessful Schools

Formed a Professional Learning Community

Focused on student work (through assessment)

Changed their instructional practice accordingly to get better results

Did all this on a continuing basis

M. Fullan, “The Three Stories of Education Reform,” Phi Delta Kappan, April 2000.

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Professional Learning Communities

Four Essential Questions:1. What do all students need to know and be

able to do?

2. How do we teach so that all students will learn?

3. How will we know if they have learned it?

4. What will we do if they don’t know or if they come to us already knowing?

R. DuFour and R. Eaker, Professional Learning Communities At Work, 1998

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How Do All The Powerful Practices Connect?

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Putting the Pieces of the Puzzle Together

Standards and Assessment

Effective Teaching Strategies

Data-Driven Decision Making

Accountability for Learning

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Data-Driven Decision Making

Priority Standards

“Unwrapped” Standards, Big Ideas, Essential Questions

Performance Assessments Common

Formative Assessments

Scoring Guides

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The Power Of COMMON Assessments

“Schools with the greatest improvements in student achievement consistently used common assessments.”

D.B. Reeves, Accountability In Action, 2004

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What Are Common Assessments?

“Not standardized tests, but rather teacher-created, teacher-owned assessments that are collaboratively scored and that provide immediate feedback to students and teachers.”

D.B. Reeves, CEO,The Leadership and Learning Center

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Data Teams: The Mechanism For Measuring Progress

1. Collect and chart data and results.

2. Analyze strengths and obstacles.

3. Set S.M.A.R.T. goal for student improvement.

4. Select effective teaching strategies.

5. Determine results indicators.

Data Teams Process, The Leadership and Learning Center

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Nine Effective Teaching Strategies

1. Similarities and Differences2. Summarizing and Note Taking3. Effort and Recognition4. Homework and Practice5. Nonlinguistic Representation6. Cooperative Learning7. Setting Objectives, Providing Feedback8. Generating and Testing Hypotheses9. Cues, Questions, Advance Organizers

R.J. Marzano, D.J. Pickering, J.E. Pollock,Classroom Instruction That Works, 2001

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Two Interdependent Practices

Data TeamsCommon Formative Assessments

Learning

Centered

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Powerful PracticesProduce Results!

Improvement in student achievement on all assessment measures!

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The Two Tools of Assessment

“No single assessment can meet everyone’s information needs…To maximize student success, assessment must be seen as an instructional tool for use while learning is occurring, and as an accountability tool to determine if learning has occurred. Because both purposes are important, they must be in balance.”

NEA: Balanced Assessment: Key to Accountability and Improved Student Learning, 2003

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Alignment of Assessments

Alignment of all assessment measures—classroom, common, district, and state—provides predictive value of how students are likely to do on the next level of assessment in time for teachers to make instructional adjustments!

In this way, assessment is truly informing instruction!

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Talk It Over!

What benefits do you see in deliberately aligning powerful instruction and assessment practices to improve student learning?

Record any specific questions you would you like to discuss further.

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Why Do Educators Assess?

“They want to know if, and to what degree, students are making progress toward explicit learning goals.”

“The true purpose of assessment must be, first and foremost, to inform instructional decision making.”

L. Ainsworth and D. Viegut, Common Formative Assessments, 2006, p. 21

Group Discussion

Read independently (p. 18-22) Make notes Q & A and discussion

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Great Educators

“…use assessment data to make real-time decisions and to restructure their teaching accordingly.”

D. B. Reeves, Accountability for Learning: How Teachers and School Leaders Can Take Charge, 2004, p. 71

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Assess More Often

A number of short assessments given over time will provide a better indication of a student’s learning than one or two large assessments given in the middle and at the end of the grading period.

Robert Marzano, Richard Stiggins, Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam, W. James Popham, and Douglas B. Reeves

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Important Distinctions

Assessment OF Learning

Assessment FOR Learning

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Assessment OF Learning

Summative assessment for unit, quarter, semester, grade level, or course of study

Provides “status report” on degree of student proficiency or mastery relative to targeted standard(s)

S. L. Bravmann, “Assessment’s ‘Fab Four’”Education Week, March 17, 2004, p. 56

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Assessment FOR Learning

Formative: given before and during the teaching process

Diagnostic: intended to be used as a guide to improve teaching and learning

Answers key questions: Do students possess critical pre-requisite skills and knowledge? Do students already know some of the material that is to be taught?

S. L. Bravmann, “Assessment’s ‘Fab Four’”Education Week, March 17, 2004, p. 56

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Conclusion

If we do a good job in our assessments for learning, then the results of our assessment of learning will surely follow!

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What Are Common Formative Assessments?

Assessments for learning administered to all students in grade level or course several times during semester, trimester, or year

Items collaboratively designed by participating teachers

Items represent essential (Priority) standards only

Items aligned to district and state tests Results analyzed in Data Teams in order to

differentiate instruction

L. Ainsworth and D. Viegut, Common Formative Assessments, 2006.

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Common Formative Assessments

Please read bulleted summary in supporting documents,

pp. 111-113.

Group Discussion

p. 111-113, Common Formative Assessments: A Summary

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Five Key Benefits of Formative Assessments

Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success (rubrics and exemplars)

Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning

Providing feedback that moves learners forward

D. Wiliam and M. Thompson, “Integrating Assessment With Instruction: What Will It Take to Make It Work?,”

The Future of Assessment: Shaping Teaching andLearning, C. Dwyer, ed., 2007

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Five Key Benefits of Formative Assessments

Activating students as instructional resources for one another

Activating students as the owners of their own learning

D. Wiliam and M. Thompson, “Integrating Assessment With Instruction: What Will It Take to Make It Work?,”

The Future of Assessment: Shaping Teaching andLearning, C. Dwyer, ed., 2007

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Research Support

“Research suggests that, if done well, genuine ‘assessments for learning’ can produce among the largest achievement gains ever reported for educational interventions.”

L. Olson, “’Just-in-Time’ Tests Change What Classrooms Do Next,”

Education Week, May 2, 2007, p. 22.

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Formative Assessment

“In other words, formative assessment, effectively implemented, can do as much or more to improve student achievement than any of the most powerful instructional interventions (such as) intensive reading instruction, one-on-one tutoring, and the like.”

L. Darling-Hammond and J. Bransford, eds. PreparingTeachers for a Changing World, 2005, p. 277

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Research Support

“In reviewing 250 studies from around the world, published between 1987 and 1998, we found that a focus by teachers on assessment for learning, as opposed to assessment of learning, produced a substantial increase in students’ achievement.”

P. Black and D. Wiliam, “Assessment and Classroom Learning,” Assessment in Education:

Principles, Policy, and Practice, 1998, 5(1), pp. 7-73.

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Research Support “Reviews of research in this area by Natriello

(1987) and Crooks (1988) were updated by Black and Wiliam (1998) who concluded that regular use of classroom formative assessment would raise student achievement by 0.4 to 0.7 standard deviations—enough to raise the United States to the top five in international rankings.”

D. Wiliam, “Content Then Process: Teacher Learning Communities in the Service

of Formative Assessment,” Unpublished Manuscript, 2007

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Achievement Gains Associated With Number of Assessments Over 15 weeks

Number of Assessments

Effect Size Percentile Gain

0 0 0

1 0.34 13.5

5 0.53 20.0

10 0.60 22.5

15 0.66 24.5

20 0.71 26.0

25 0.78 28.5

30 0.82 29.0Source: R.L. Bangert-Drowns, J. A. Kulik, and C. C. Kulik (1991);reported in R. J. Marzano’s, The Art and Science of Teaching, ASCD, 2007

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Research Support

“Persuasive empirical evidence shows that these (properly formulated formative classroom assessments) work; clearly, teachers should use them to improve both teaching and learning.”

W. J. Popham, Emeritus Professor, UCLA Graduate School of Education,

Education Leadership, 2006, 64(3), pp. 86-87.

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Assessment of Only Highest Priority Standards

“It is critical that all of the assessed standards be truly significant. From an instructional perspective, it is better for tests to measure a handful of powerful skills accurately than it is for tests to do an inaccurate job of measuring many skills.”

W. J. Popham, Test Better, Teach Better, 2003, p. 143

BREAK ???

3 – Part CFA(see template)

1.) Selected Response (multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the blank, etc…)

2.) Constructed Response (open-ended, short answer, etc…)

3.) Essential Questions/Big Ideas4545