Formative AssessmentsTheory into Practice

Anthony Devine

Based on:•Work done by the ELD PLC•Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading (Marzano 2010)•Designing & Teaching Learning Goals & Objectives (Marzano 2009)•The Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano 2007)•Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Assessment to Transform Teaching and Learning (Reeves 2007)•Revisiting Professional Communities at Work (Dufour, DuFour, and Eaker 2008)

Learning Outcomes

• Develop an understanding of what research says about the benefits of the formative assessment process on student learning.

• Be able to begin developing formative assessments in your PLC by following the steps you learn about in this presentation.

How do we commonly use assessments?

• At the end of a unit to determine our students’ proficiency with learning goals.

• To assign a score/grade to students.• To determine the academic progress our school

makes each year (standardized tests).

We usually use assessments to show us what our students know: Assessment of learning: Summative Assessment.

After one assessment, we move on to the next learning goal(s).

Assessment of Learning: Summative Assessment• Happens at the end of learning.• Report on student learning:

– Pass or Fail?– Proficient or Not Proficient?– A, B, C, D, or F?

• Low-frequency reporting on student learning.

Assessment of learning, which asks what students have learned at the end of a learning period, does not do much to affect student learning. This kind of assessment, summative assessment, measures learning, but it doesn’t guide learning.

How can we use assessments to cause students to learn more; that is, to increase achievement in the future?

Assessment for Learning: Formative Assessment

• Is a process, not any particular test.• Happens multiple times during learning.

– High frequency reporting on student learning.

• Provides opportunities for teachers to adjust instruction based on student need.

• Provides students with opportunities to recognize their own level of achievement toward a learning goal and demonstrate learning growth.

Assessment for learning, which asks what students have learned during a learning period, uses student achievement as a tool for ongoing progress. This kind of assessment, formative assessment, guides students toward learning goals.

Assessment of Learning vs. Assessment for Learning

Autopsies can tell us the cause of death, but the results aren’t much use to the cadaver.

To borrow an analogy:

summative assessment formative assessmentautopsy physical examination

Physical examinations can diagnose problems and offer solutions to those struggling with their health. The results are useful to the patient.

Less Dramatic Analogies

summative assessment formative assessmentend of unit test practice test

post-season football game pre-season football gametrack meet track practice

on-stage performance dress rehearsal

Formative assessments offer participants feedback on learning progress and multiple opportunities to evaluate and improve learning progress.

Instead of using assessments to sort the winners and the losers, we can use assessments as roadmaps to success, with signposts along the way directing students and teachers.

picking and measuring vegetables from your garden

feeding and watering the plants according to their need—directly

affecting their growth

What does Research say about Formative Assessment?

• Meta-analysis of 250 studies on formative assessment showed a range from 16 to 26 percentile improvement toward learning goals.– What does that mean?

• A student achieving at the 50th percentile on a learning goal without participating in a formative assessment process would be expected to achieve at the 66th to 76th percentile with participating in a formative assessment process.

What else are Researches saying about Formative Assessment?

• “Assessment for learning… when done well, is one of the most powerful, high-leverage strategies for improving student learning that we know of” (Fullan, 2004).

• “Assessment for learning rivals one-on-one tutoring in its effectiveness and… particularly benefits low-achieving students” (Stiggins, 2004).

• “Formative assessment… can help to dramatically enhance student achievement throughout the K-12 system” (Marzano, 2006).

• “There have been few initiatives in education with such a strong body of evidence [as formative assessments] to support a claim to raise standards” (Black & William, 2004).

• Research done by our own ELD PLC concludes that formative assessments help students learn.

Where do Formative Assessments come from?

• When a mommy assessment and a daddy assessment love each other very much…

• Teacher designed– Externally developed assessments simply do not

meet the defining characteristics of formative assessment.

– Many test publishers have tried to repackage old assessment as “formative”. Don’t be fooled. Assessments designed by a team of teachers for their own students are far more valuable for learning than tests designed by outsiders.

Developing a Formative Assessment

1. Choose your target learning goal.2. Develop your scale/rubric.3. Design your assessment.4. Track student progress.5. Grade, report, and review.

1. Choose your target learning goal.

• Formative assessments work best when students and teachers focus on a low number of learning goals.

• Which learning goal(s) should your team focus on?– Standards-based learning goal– Align to high-stakes tests– Power standards: “the knowledge, skills, and

dispositions that have endurance, leverage, and are essential in preparing students for readiness at the next level; the most essential learning or outcomes.” (Dufour et al.)

– Area of PLC concern/habitual student struggle• ELD PLC’s experience…

PLC Reading

• Our ELD PLC Team Lead suggested that we read the portions of Marzano’s The Art and Science of Teaching that dealt with Formative Assessment. (pages 12-14 and 24-27)

ELD PLC Discussion• Our PLC discussed the usefulness of formative assessments as we

prepared our students for the district benchmark assessment process on our wikispace.

“Unwrapping” the Standard (Ainsworth)

• Analyze the wording of the target standard.– Pinpoint exactly what students need to know.– Pinpoint exactly what students need to be able to

do.• Underline key concepts in the standard:

– Nouns/noun phrases• Circle skills in the standard:

– Verbs• Use these nouns and verbs to write your

learning goal.

1. Choose your target learning goal. (cont.)

• Which learning goal will your team focus on?• Power standards in your content area:

• Areas of concern/habitual poor student performance:

2. Develop your scale/rubric

• ELD PLC experience…• Many researchers suggest using a four-point

scale.– More reliable than the 100 point scale.– Easier for groups to reach a consensus as to how

to define and measure proficiency.– Simple to develop.

• Each learning goal needs its own scale.• On the four-point scale, begin with your

learning goal as the 3.0 score…

General Scale

Score 4.0 More complex content.

Score 3.0 Target learning goal.

Score 2.0 Simpler content.

Score 1.0 With help, partial success at score 2.0 content and score 3.0 content.

Score 0.0 Even with help, no success.

2. Develop your scale/rubric (cont.)

• This scale facilitates differentiation.• More complex content for advanced learning.• Simpler content to support learning growth

toward the target learning goal.General Scale

Score 4.0

More complex content.

Score 3.0

Target learning goal.

Score 2.0

Simpler content.

Score 1.0

With help, partial success at score 2.0 content and score 3.0 content.

Score 0.0

Even with help, no success.

Complete ScaleScore 4.0 More complex content.

Score 3.5 In addition to score 3.0 performance, partial success at score 4.0 content.

Score 3.0 Target learning goal.

Score 2.5 No major errors or omissions at score 2.0 content and partial success at score 3.0 content.

Score 2.0 Simpler content.

Score 1.5 Partial success at score 2.0 content, but major errors or omissions at score 3.0 content.

Score 1.0 With help, partial success at score 2.0 content and score 3.0 content.

Score 0.5 With help, partial success at score 2.0 content, but not at score 3.0 content.

Score 0.0 Even with help, no success.

Add your learning goal to the scale

Score 4.0 More complex content:

Score 3.5 In addition to score 3.0 performance, partial success at score 4.0 content.

Score 3.0 Target learning goal:

Score 2.5 No major errors or omissions at score 2.0 content and partial success at score 3.0 content.

Score 2.0 Simpler content:

Score 1.5 Partial success at score 2.0 content, but major errors or omissions at score 3.0 content.

Score 1.0 With help, partial success at score 2.0 content and score 3.0 content.

Score 0.5 With help, partial success at score 2.0 content, but not at score 3.0 content.

Score 0.0 Even with help, no success.

3. Design your assessment.

• ELD PLC experience…– Modeled after the essay portion of the CAHSEE

and the district’s writing benchmark assessments.

3. Design your assessment. (cont.)

• Two types of items on the assessment:– Selected Response:

• Multiple choice, matching, alternative choice, true/false, multiple response, fill in the blank.

• Typically address score 2.0 content.– Constructed Response:

• Requires students to construct a correct answer as opposed to recognizing one.

• Typically address score 3.0 and 4.0 content.

3. Design your assessment. (cont.)

• Three sections of the assessment– Assess score 2.0 content.– Assess score 3.0 content.– Assess score 4.0 content.

3. Design your assessment. (cont.)

• Trouble shooting– What if students get items in a higher level

correct, but not a lower level?• Students put effort into answering some items, but not

others.• Teacher’s evaluation of the response was inaccurate.• Items written for a particular score were flawed in

some way.Solutions:

Ignore items that appear aberrant.Meet individually with students and ask them to reconcile the issues.Reclassify items at a higher or lower score value based on responses of the entire class.

3. Design your assessment. (cont.)

• Other assessment options:– Oral Responses

• Formal Oral Reports• Probing Questions

– Demonstrations• Have students show you they know how to perform a skill

(using a map’s legend, hitting a softball, hypothesis formulation and testing, using a literary device, etc.).

– Unobtrusive Assessments• Teacher observations of student learning.• Difficult to administer to entire classes.

– Student-Generated Assessments• Students propose tasks that will demonstrate their

proficiency of a specific learning goal/ understanding of a specific topic.

4. Track student progress.

• Both teachers and students need to track progress– Teachers: to monitor student progress and

identify areas that require additional/modified instruction.

– Students: to monitor their own learning and recognize learning growth (motivator).

Student Progress Chart

Teachers Tracking Progress

• ELD PLC Experience…– Heavy reliance on our wikispace.

• Gradesheet for Approach 1– Strengths and weaknesses

• Gradesheet for Approach 2– Strengths and weaknesses

Teachers Tracking Progress

With the formative assessment process:• “… no score should be entered into a

gradebook that is not an estimate of a student’s knowledge status for a particular topic at a particular time… entering a 0 for not taking an assessment or as some type of punishment does not represent a student’s true status and is completely inappropriate” (Marzano 2010).

Teachers Tracking Progress

• Which tracking approach will work best for your team?– Wikispace reporting and deciding as a PLC what

will work best for your students.– Approach 1: Summative Score Assigned at the End

of the Grading Period– Approach 2: Gradual Accumulation of a

Summative Score

There is also the additional option: to develop a summative assessment.

ELD PLC Experience…

5. Grade, report, and review.

• Although it is not appropriate to assign a final score for a learning goal during the formative assessment process, it is completely appropriate to assign a score for a learning goal after the formative assessment process (possibly even taking into account a final, summative assessment for a learning goal).

• However, most of our grade books do not follow the four-point scale—so how do we record student scores for this process in the grade book?

• Electronic Grade Books (weighted scores)

Translating the Four-Point Scale to Our Grading Approach

Scale Score Percentage Letter Grade4.0 100 A+3.5 95 A3.0 90 A2.5 80 B2.0 70 C1.5 65 D1.0 60 D-

Below 1.0 50 F

5. Grade, report, and review. (cont.)

• Although students are tracking their own progress, you will be assigning students a summative score (and grade) for the learning goal.– Based on the formative assessment process + a

summative assessment.– Based solely on the formative assessment process.

• The summative score should reflect the level of proficiency the student has achieved by the end of the formative assessment process, not an average of the student’s formative assessment scores.

5. Grade, report, and review. (cont.)

• As a PLC you can review your scores and reflect together on what worked and what didn’t work (both during and after the formative assessment process).

• What strategies/activities did students seem to learn the most from?

• What might you change for the next time you teach this learning goal, in order to cause more learning?

• Are there any additional learning goals in your content area that would be a good fit for the formative assessment process?

Celebrate Learning Success• An overwhelming amount of research

states that the formative assessment process helps students learn.

• The process offers visible evidence of student learning—graphing scores.

• Before moving on to your next learning goal, be sure to recognize and celebrate your students’ learning success.