Recently, I met with the second- through fifth-grade teams at our school to look at student achievement on our district benchmark tests. We analyzed the results. Then we set out to identify specific focal questions that large numbers of students answered incorrectly. We’d hoped to develop an instructional plan to help the students answer similar questions correctly in the future.
In every meeting, no matter the grade, teachers arrived at the same conclusion: Students chose the wrong answer because the format of the test questions was so unfamiliar and contrived that it threw them off.
The language was no everyday 7-year-old language. At least not in our community filled with students of all different colors and speakers of many different languages.
The test’s physical formatting differs from any authentic text students have encountered. Questions are organized horizontally across the exam page, but the scannable answer document is oriented vertically, in columns and too small for students to visually discriminate.
Some test proponents say getting students started with testing at a young age will prepare them to be good test-takers in the future, with advance placement and college entrance exams on the horizon. I don’t feel any testing, of this type, gives teachers or families a full picture of student ability and achievement.
As we developed our instructional plans, we realized we were stuck. We wanted to prepare our students for success, but that meant we might be engaging in the most dreaded, most despised of all instructional practices: Teaching To The Test.
Our teaching teams decided to create an assessment that truly reflects student learning. It’s more comprehensive and takes more work on the teacher’s part, but reduces frustration from both teachers and students.
Some teachers created mini assessments during daily morning work time with students. Others asked students to work independently on a few items related to a standard as part of a morning warm-up. Some teachers worked with students in small groups and gave them tasks to complete that showed they had control of the content.
As teachers, we want to know what accurate and relevant measures of student learning and knowledge are already in place in our schools. We wonder if something else would be better. And we seek solutions to assess content our students already know and make plans to teach them what they don’t.
A shift is taking place in the world of assessment. Many assessments, from the local or district level all the way up to the Advanced Placement exams, now incorporate free response components which ask students to demonstrate what they are describing. These assessments take much longer to develop and to score, turning off many teachers to their use. In exchange, though, they offer a much broader picture of students’ current understandings. They also help teachers plan what to teach next based on content that students themselves are showing us they need to practice more.
At our school, teachers decided that the investment of time is worth the reward of deeper student knowledge and stronger instructional planning. We’re putting performance assessments into place in many forms. Some teachers now invite students to solve math problems interactively on the whiteboard, talking about the strategies they’re using as they go. Other teachers are leading conversations about read-aloud stories that are driven by students’ use of vocabulary and comprehension of the text. It’s a new way of thinking about assessment. It feels a bit daunting at times, but we’re up for the challenge. We know it’s what we need to do to get a full picture of what our students can do. The days of relying on multiple-choice tests that tell us what they can’t do are over, at this school at least.
What are you doing to rethink student assessment?
Kotleba is an instructional reform facilitator in California.
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