In their opening General Session address, education consultants Art Costa and Bena Kallick discussed ways that educators can use assessment data to help make their schools into true learning organizations. Costa and Kallick are coeditors of the ASCD book Assessment in the Learning Organization: Shifting the Paradigm (1995).
"What we need is a school that's a place where everybody's mind can be nurtured—a school that's a home for the mind," Costa said. "That's what a learning organization is to me: Everybody in the whole school, in the whole district, in the whole community, is in a constant state of learning. It's a place where everybody's mind is developed and enhanced, and we can all be learners among learners."
Educators need to collect data continuously and reflect on it to maintain a constant state of learning, the presenters said. To make the collection of assessment data motivating rather than demoralizing, educators must create "feedback spirals," Kallick emphasized. "Not only do you need to collect the data but it needs to energize your organization," she said, urging her listeners to "create a recursive process in which you're continuously learning and growing." Such an emphasis "would take us away from the concept that assessment is equated with reporting, and would bring us to the idea that assessment data is a stimulus for further inquiry."
After collecting data, "we may indeed report what we've learned," Kallick continued, "but what will energize our organization is not the report card but the questions that arise in our minds" when we analyze the data. "So to us, assessment is a set of questions, not just a finality," she said. "The feedback spiral allows you to think about [assessment data] in a very recursive way."
Schools have very little time to look back on their work, because they're always moving forward, Kallick noted. "If we were able to have a balance of both planning and reflecting on the work, we would probably learn and grow more profitably."