Best Practices for State Assessment Systems, Part I Summary of a Workshop (2010) / Chapter Skim
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2 Improving Assessments - Possibilities and Questions
2 Improving Assessments - Possibilities and Questions
Pages 13-30
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From page 13... ...
They are widely viewed as a critical tool in public education because they define both broad goals and specific expectations for students. They are intended to guide classroom instruction, the development of curricula and supporting materials, assessments, and profes sional development.
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From page 14... ...
Learning complex ideas takes time and often happens as students work on tasks that force them to synthesize new observations with what they already knew. Students draw on a foundation of existing understanding and experiences as they gradually assemble bodies of factual knowledge and organize it according to their growing conceptual understanding.
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From page 15... ...
For example, standards can identify some of the most common misconceptions students have about particular material -- and perhaps point teachers to more detailed documenta tion of the "non-normative" ideas researchers have identified. The approach Stevens and her colleagues have developed for designing rigorous science standards reflects this model and is also based on previous work in the design of curricula and assessments, which they call construct-centered design (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998; Mislevy and Riconscente, 2005; Krajcik, McNeill, and Reiser, 2008; Shin, Stevens, and Krajcik, in press)
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From page 16... ...
, and it describes the upper level of K-12 understanding. The articulation of the standard for this construct would also address the kinds of misconceptions students are likely to bring to this topic, which are also
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From page 17... ...
Stevens noted that she and her colleagues were also asked to examine the draft versions of the common core standards for 12th grade English and mathematics developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, to assess how closely they conform to the construct-centered design approach. They noted that both sets of standards do describe how the knowledge they call for would be used by students, but that the English standards do not describe what sorts of evidence would be neces
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From page 18... ...
removal of electrons causes the remaining material to have an imbalance in positive charge. – Students cite the opposite charges of the two surfaces as producing an attractive force that hold the two objects together.
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From page 19... ...
measures consistent constructs and contributes distinct but related information that educators can use. Annual, systemwide, summative tests receive the most attention, he pointed out, but the great majority of assessments that students deal with are those that teachers use to measure daily, weekly, and monthly progress.
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From page 20... ...
Thus, they can either focus on the tested material despite possible misgivings about what they are neglecting, or they can view preparing for the state test and teaching as two separate endeavors. More broadly, Wilson said, systems that are driven by their large-scale assessments risk overlooking important aspects of the curricula that cannot be adequately assessed using multiple-choice tests (just as some content cannot be easily assessed using projects or portfolios)
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From page 21... ...
The more specific guidance developed for a particular item is used as the actual scoring guide, Wilson explained, which is designed to ensure that all of the information elicited by the task is easy for teachers to interpret. Figure 2-2 is the scoring guide for the "Kayla" item, with sample student work to illustrate the levels of performance.
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From page 22... ...
TECHNICAL CHALLENgES Stephen Lazer reflected on the technical challenges of pursuing innovative assessments on a large scale from the point of view of test developers. He began with a summary of current goals for improving assessments: • increase use of performance tasks to measure a growing array of skills and obtain a more nuanced picture of students; • rely much less on multiple-choice formats because of limits to what they can measure and their perceived impact on instruction;
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From page 23... ...
. • use technology to measure content and skills not easily measured using paper-and-pencil formats and to tailor assessments to individuals; and • incorporate assessment tasks that are authentic -- that is, that ask stu dents to do tasks that might be done outside of testing and are worth while learning activities in themselves.
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From page 24... ...
. FIgURE 2-2 Scoring guide for sample item.
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From page 25... ...
Use of Computers and Technology Computers make it possible to present students with a task that could not otherwise be done -- for example, by allowing students to demonstrate geography skills using an online atlas, when distributing printed atlases would have been prohibitively expensive. Equally important, though, is that students will increasingly be expected to master technological skills, particularly in science, and those kinds of skills can only be assessed using such technology.
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From page 26... ...
Further research is needed to address many of these questions. Test Development At present, professional test developers know how to produce multiple-choice items with fairly consistent performance characteris tics on a large scale, and there is a knowledge base to support some kinds of constructed-response items.
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From page 27... ...
Scoring Human scoring introduces another source of possible variation and limits the possibility of providing rapid results. In general, the complexity of scoring for some innovative assessments is an important factor to consider in a high-stakes, "adequate yearly progress" environment, in which high con fidence in reliability and interrater reliability rates is very important.
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From page 28... ...
Taking this path would seem to require a combination of time, energy, and expertise that is not typically devoted to test development. However, the BEAR example seemed to marry the expertise of content learning, assessment design, and measurement in a way that offers the potential to be implemented in a relatively efficient way.
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From page 29... ...
That is, the need to reduce student achievement to a single number derives from the punitive nature of the current accountability system. It is this pressure that is responsible for many of the constraints on the nature of assessments.
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