Assessment Guide
Quick Insight and Tips for Getting the Most out of Your
Assessments
SunGard® K-12 Education
2014
Includes
Formative Assessment Trends: The Common Core ...................................................................... 3
Four Reasons Performance-Based Tasks Make Excellent Formative Assessments ............... 4
Four Big Ideas about Assessment .................................................................................................... 5
Three Steps to Overcoming the Challenges of Student Assessment.......................................... 7
Formative Assessments: A Performance Check-Up ...................................................................... 8
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Formative Assessment Trends: The Common Core
Recent changes to the Common Core curriculum have increased the rigor of education in
classrooms around the country. As this trend continues, it has become more important than
ever to understand what students know and are able to do. This can be achieved with formative
assessment practices.
Researchers have found that it is vital to extract meaningful trends and information as it relates
to the Common Core. This prepares students with the knowledge and abilities not only for
scoring well on tests, but also for ensuring college and career success.
Common Formative Assessments: How to Connect Standards-Based Instruction and
Assessment (Ainsworth & Viegut, 2006) states that by varying the type of formative assessment
used over the course of the school week, teachers will receive a more accurate and complete
picture of students’ comprehension. This is described by Ainsworth and Viegut as a “multiple-
measure assessment ‘window’ into student understanding.” Studies such as this show that
formative assessment is a powerful tool for the improvement of student learning. Gathering,
interpreting, and acting on information throughout the students’ learning process, rather than
afterward, plays a critical role in tracking successful and unsuccessful patterns in both teaching
and learning. In this way learning gaps, academic progress, information absorption, strategic
course corrections, and other critical elements of learning can be evaluated and applied toward
future processes.
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Four Reasons Performance-Based Tasks Make Excellent Formative
Assessments
A new whitepaper by SunGard K-12 Education shared four reasons why performance-based
formative assessment not only guides instruction but also is an effective part of the student
learning process. Recent research by Jan and Steve Chappuis of the Assessment Training
Institute found these learning/assessment tools:
1. Provide Near Immediate Feedback to Students - During performance-based formative
assessments, teachers can “assess each step of the project, redirect as needed, and check
for understanding.” By providing prompt feedback, these types of formative assessments
allow students to more easily answer three questions: Where am I going? Where am I now?
How can I close the gap?
2. Offer Deeper Evaluations - “Some students struggle more with ‘sit and get’ learning; for
those students, creative, smaller, or hands-on tasks may better allow them to illustrate their
understanding.” These tasks engage them in deeper evaluations through exploration,
investigation, and action.
3. Create Student-Centered Evaluation and Learning - In student-centered evaluation,
students can act as group leaders, research for themselves, and teach each other—all of
which frees the teacher to observe, make anecdotal notes, and plan future instruction.
4. Serve as Practice for Students - These types of assessments “serve as practice for
students, just like a meaningful homework assignment does.”
By allowing teachers to gather, interpret, and act on information throughout the students’
learning process, formative assessment plays a critical role in tracking successful and
unsuccessful patterns in both teaching and learning. For more insights, download the full white
paper at:
[Link]
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Four Big Ideas about Assessment
From FETC session, titled “If You Hate Assessment, You’re Doing It Wrong,” by Dean
Shareski, community manager for Discovery Education Canada.
Shareski, a former teacher of first through eighth grades and currently an instructor for pre-
service teachers at University of Regina, began his presentation by asking, “How do you define
learning?”
“We are in the business of learning, and yet we have a hard time defining exactly what it is,” he
said. “And that’s not because we’re not bright people. It’s because it’s a really hard question. If
you make the answer really simple, I think you’re missing something. It should be a difficult
question. It should be a question that we ask ourselves and each other all the time.”
Shareski went on to make the point that if learning is complex then we should not expect
assessment to be simple. He then challenged educators to begin to think differently about
assessment. “Assessment is not a spreadsheet,” he said. “It’s a conversation.” And for
Shareski, the assessment conversation starts with doing a better job of documenting learning.
To do that, Shareski emphasized “four big ideas that really turn the tables and change
assessment from something we don’t like to something we actually enjoy.”
1. Self/Peer Assessment - “If we believe that assessment is embedded in the learning,
then we can’t say [the students] own all the learning and [the teacher] owns all the
assessment,” he said. “We need to figure out a way to make our students more part of
that process.” Shareski offered a couple of suggestions for drawing students into the
process:
• Make the notion of social learning integral to the learning process - “I argue
that every teacher, from kindergarten on, should ask their students these two
questions: What did you learn from others? What did you contribute to the
learning of others?” he said. By establishing the expectation that students should
contribute to the class’s understanding, students will begin to pay attention to
others around them and start thinking about who they can learn from.
• Students choose weighting - After setting some guidelines, Shareski typically
gives students a five to ten percent leeway for the weighting of assessments of
their learning. “Having that choice makes a very big difference for them,” he says.
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• Have students grade themselves - Calling it a “really interesting process,”
Shareski suggested having students document their learning and grade
themselves. By doing that, educators can help students develop an essential tool
for life-long learning.
2. Put Technology to Work - Shareski encouraged educators to put technology to work to
“capture the learning so that we can look back and reflect on it.” Photo and videos are
just two ways for students to document their learning. He also shared that he uses the
“secret” email address in Evernote to allow students to send their mid-term assessments
to him. In these assessments, he asks his students to share what they’ve learned, what
they’re struggling with, what they’re feeling good about, and how he can better support
them. Shareski then responds vocally to their observations through a feature in
Evernote. He says the recording makes it easy to share feedback and that the recording
more accurately conveys both the message and emotion of his feedback.
3. Make It Matter - Shareski emphasized that “simply taking their work and saying we’re
going to share this work with other people changes the game.” He encouraged
educators to think of the world as our refrigerator. Document classwork on YouTube.
Share pictures on Flickr. Create a blog. “We need to put value on the work,” he said.
“[By doing this, you respond] to the question, ‘Why do I have to learn this?’”
4. Model - Educators should model metacognition for their students. “We do have to model
what this looks like,” he says. “This can’t be something we just ask kids to do.” Talk
about your learning. Make it part of the everyday classroom experience. By doing that, it
will become part of the student’s everyday experience —both inside and outside the
classroom.
Visit Shareski’s blog, Ideas and Thoughts: Learning Stuff Since 1964 for more insights about
teaching and learning. [Link]
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Three Steps to Overcoming the Challenges of Student Assessment
Report card grades are only a small part of K-12 student evaluation. To wholly appraise a
student, gathering, interpreting, and acting on insights about their performance plays a critical
role in tracking successful and unsuccessful patterns in teaching and learning. Research
spanning four decades has proven formative assessment to be a powerful ally for improving
student performance and differentiating instruction.
The only way to know if a secondary math lab or additional reading class is providing an optimal
learning experience is through assessment. For educators to maximize evaluation
effectiveness, consider the following:
1. Embrace Change - To more easily transition to the Common Core States Standards, many
school districts have begun revamping their curriculum offerings. Reach out to your
department head to get the necessary resources and information to begin implementing
positive change into your classroom.
2. Explain the Process - There’s methodology behind the new rigorous standards. Be sure to
explain to children what they’ll learn and why they are learning it, and keep parents
informed as well. Work with your colleagues to achieve this goal.
3. Align Assessments and Curriculum - To meet Common Core objectives, curriculum
should be constantly reviewed and updated. Evaluations must be designed to achieve this
end. If applicable, consider modeling appropriate classroom tests after state exams.
The optimal challenge for today’s educator is to accomplish increased performance scrutiny
while continuing to foster a love of learning—this while taking into consideration each child’s
unique needs. However, all of these objectives may be accomplished with the right practices
and tools.
7 Assessment Guide
Formative Assessments: A Performance Check-Up
During an eSchool News webinar sponsored by SunGard K-12 Education, experts took a deep
dive into formative assessments to highlight this tool that has proven a powerful ally for
improving student performance and differentiating instruction. The panel was moderated by
Joel Hames, SunGard K-12 director of product management, and featured Bethany Silver,
Ph.D. —director of assessment, evaluation, and research of the Bloomfield Public School
District, Conn. —and John Phillipo, Ph.D., founder and executive director of the Center for
Educational Leadership and Technology. Read the insights from our panelists below.
Formative Assessment is a Process
Joel Hames emphasized that formative assessment is a process, not just a “thing that you do”
and detailed the following four primary attributes of the process:
1. Clarify intended learning - Hames said that formative assessment describes “your
learning targets in student-friendly language, something that they can grab on to and
understand what the finishing line looks like. What are they supposed to get to?”
2. Elicit evidence - The evidence of student learning goes far beyond test papers. “It’s all the
obtrusive and unobtrusive interactions you have with students in which you look at the work
that they do, sit next to them, and provide that direct feedback,” said Hames. “It’s how they
show understanding of their competency, their mastery of a concept through any number of
different avenues.”
3. Interpret evidence - Educators must then interpret the evidence. “Understand what it
means in the context of that student’s experience. The learning target itself,” Hames said.
“How strong was your observation when you elicited the evidence? Does that connect well
with interpreting and understanding where they are?”
4. Act on that evidence - “How do you move the student forward?” asked Hames. “What kind
of feedback are you giving them to improve what they are trying to achieve.”
Tips for Integrating Formative Assessment in the Curriculum, Classroom
“Formative assessment really is the very air we breathe in a classroom,” says Bethany Silver.
“It’s that active, that engaged and [the point at which] students are learning effectively.”
Bloomfield Public School has adopted SunGard K-12’s curriculum mapping software,
CurriculumCONNECTOR, to support the transition from state standards to the Common Core
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State Standards. The software, Silver says, supports formative assessment by archiving
evidence of student learning. “[CurriculumCONNECTOR] has just exploded the possibilities in
our district in terms of making the curriculum dynamic, in making it accessible to all our staff,”
she says. “And, it’s just so exciting. We’re able to upload artifacts, examples of student work,
rubrics, look-fors, etc., that teachers can really use to guide the student experience and that can
really help shape the formative assessment process.”
“When we bring our curriculum into our classroom, all the strategies that we’re using should be
in service to the intended learning. And, formative assessment is one of our strategies that
guide the learning experience,” says Silver. “Make the demonstration of learning evidence clear
and well-aligned to the intended learning—that’s how formative assessment can support that
curriculum implementation.”
In the classroom, Silver said formative assessment happens in the “teaching moment” and
offered some examples:
• Text What You’ve Learned by Sarah Brown Wessling - At the beginning of class,
students answer an introductory question by texting their response to Poll Everywhere.
Wessling then projects those answers on the white board so students have an
opportunity to share what they’ve learned and see what others have learned. Wessling
then drops those responses into a word cloud generator.
• Quick Write - Students provide a 15-word summary, 50-word summary, or a 100-word
summary of the key point of the homework assignment, etc. They then can engage in a
Think-Pair-Share and based on that, the teacher will develop an understanding of where
today’s lesson needs to start.
Silver noted that students should lead or partner in the interpretation of learning evidence. “It’s a
very, very rich opportunity for students to understand how others are interpreting the curriculum
and to broaden learners’ experience with that curriculum,” she said. “You are distributing that
learning process and building an ownership of the learning between all of the students in the
classroom—having them not only collaborate with you, but also having them collaborate with
one another to build a true learning environment. And, that’s all done through the process of
formative assessment.”
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Good Processes Need Good Tools
John R. Phillipo, Ph.D. —the founder and executive director of the Center for Educational
Leadership and Technology, which assists schools and universities in linking 21st-centry
educational reforms with the effective use of information technology—emphasized that “a good
process needs good tools.” “I worry a lot about whether the teachers have those tools,” he said.
“We need some easy-to-use tools that help us with this inventory of learning. Because if I see
evidence of effectiveness, I don’t have time to type that all in.”
Phillipo emphasized that formative assessment needs to “really change” the curriculum.
“The curriculum guide is really an important document. But, sadly it’s also the most static
document. What is going to happen with formative assessment is that is now going to have to
become a living, breathing, organic document,” he said. “Formative assessment illustrates
learner progress and provides teachers with the data necessary to footnote the curriculum …
and we can do that in real time. Then we’re making the curriculum used and useful and visible
based on student evidence.”
Phillipo believes the two-way exchange between curriculum and formative assessment isn’t as
robust as it should be. “Right now, sadly, formative assessment is an island over here. And, we
need to help pull some of that data together,” he says.
He suggested the following as elements of effective formative assessment system/process:
• Help communicate the same information in a consistent and easy format to all
stakeholders.
• Leverage the home-school portal for communicating formative assessment results to
parents.
SunGard K-12 Education’s PerformancePLUS ([Link]
software suite includes a proven assessment solution which can be paired with a curriculum
management system to provide a holistic view of both assessment and curriculum.
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