Steven Levy claims he doesn't know a thing about assessment. Yet when pressed, the 4th grade teacher admits that educators who visit his classroom tell him the activities his students find so absorbing are "wonderful examples of authentic assessment."
Levy's not being coy; he's being cautious. "Sometimes the term assessment is used for political purposes," he says, as when it's used in reference to high-stakes accountability measures. When Levy uses the term assessment, he's referring to what happens on a daily basis in his classroom. If assessment means helping students improve their work and enabling them to show their understanding through products they develop for real audiences, says Levy, then he is willing to concede that, indeed, he does know something about it.
Consider, for example, how his students at the Bowman School in Lexington, Mass., demonstrated their research and presentation skills, as well as their geographic knowledge, in response to a question Levy asked about the origin of their town's name.
"I had read that no one knows where the name of our town comes from," Levy explains. So he asked his class to find out. The students first decided they needed to know how many other towns in the United States were called Lexington. (Their research revealed 24.) They then wrote to those sites requesting information. What they received in return were "incredible stories about the history and geography of the country."
But the project didn't end there. Students in Levy's class are taught that they have an obligation to share what they learn with others, so they decided to create an exhibit for the community. They visited a local museum to learn how to build such a display and were shown how to do the lettering, how to mount the artifacts onto foam core, and what elements to include in the exhibit. The curator was so impressed with the results that the museum now houses the exhibit.
Levy has many examples of projects like this, projects that allow students to pursue their interests and create products for real purposes. Assessment in Levy's mind is not the grade he assigns at the end of the class, but the continual feedback he provides throughout the course that helps students produce something they all agree is meaningful.
Assessing What's Important
Levy's approach to teaching and assessing mirrors what Anne Davies calls the assessment-instruction cycle. Davies, an associate at Classroom Connections, International, in Courtney, B.C., explains that "in the past, teachers would instruct, instruct, instruct," and reporting time was "an event" separate from that instruction. Such an approach, she asserts, told students that "what we valued was test scores."
Now, Davies says, "we're teaching and assessing on a continual basis, helping students work toward their goals." In classrooms where assessment and instruction are interwoven, it's difficult to determine where the teaching ends and assessing begins—the transitions are seamless, she says. In classrooms where assessment and instruction are interwoven, students learn that an ability to self-assess, make adjustments, and improve performance is what's valued.
James McMillan, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, agrees. According to McMillan, students learn "the real standard" by how an assessment is designed. "If it's a multiple-choice test that requires mostly recall knowledge," then students conclude that the ability to remember facts is important, he explains. And most experts agree that developing such a skill does little to prepare students for their adult roles.
Involving Students
The skills that students should develop are the ability to determine what steps they need to take to succeed at a task and the capacity to identify what may be impeding their progress, says Chris Stewart, director of the English and History Curriculum Framework Project of the Washington, D.C., public schools. A fundamental purpose of assessment, she asserts, is to provide teachers with the information they need to help students hone these skills.
Not helping students learn how to gauge their performance can be costly to them, Stewart says. "In school, students often get [second] chances to perform," she says. If they fail a class, for example, they can usually take it over again. "In real life, poor performance may cost you a job, or a promotion," Stewart notes, adding that most poor performers are those who can't determine how well they're meeting their company's objectives.
Another chief purpose of assessment, according to Stewart, is to enable teachers to respond to needs as they occur. "When a project comes to a close, it's not very helpful to just give students a grade—that doesn't tell them much," she explains. "What is helpful is to guide them through the project, giving them opportunities to refine their products during the process." And, when assessment is embedded throughout the learning experience, what students produce in the end should be much better, Stewart contends.
Students must also be involved in establishing the standards by which their products will be evaluated, Davies argues. When students are asked to identify the types of assignments that would allow them to demonstrate what they know, they can then help identify the criteria for evaluation. "Then, throughout the project, we continually assess whether we're meeting these criteria," she explains.
Davies suggests teachers can help students set realistic standards by showing them examples of good performance. "Students need to see a range of products in order to see what kind of work is possible," she notes.
Stewart agrees. "When we share expectations with students up front, when we show them exemplars, students have a model for what we are asking them to do." Then, when a teacher gives a critique, she explains, "it's not a vague response to the performance, but offered in the context of a shared understanding of what's expected."
Some Cautions
Still, although she thinks exemplars are helpful to students, Davies says teachers have the more important job of helping students "figure out how they're smart" and helping them understand that "all these numbers and letters" can never describe their learning or what they're capable of achieving. "I would like to eradicate grades from the face of the Earth," she states, emphatically.
Add to that rubrics and checklists, says Jacqueline Grennon Brooks, director of Discovery Lab, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "From my point of view, rubrics and checklists are just different boxes to put kids into," she contends. "And in our snapshot existence, what is really so much better about giving a child a 1, 2, or 3, instead of an A, B, or C?"
Brooks, coauthor of the ASCD book The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, says she knows her perspective seems a rather negative response to well-meaning practices. Indeed, she applauds efforts by those educators who are seeking ways to better understand their students. But Brooks hopes teachers will consider how using instruments such as rubrics and checklists puts the "focus on getting students to do what we want them to do" and does little to "energize" the classroom.
"And as much as people don't want to hear this," she adds, "I don't know, from a human development point of view, whether we have a right to say, this is exemplary' or this stinks.'" Brooks, instead, urges teachers to offer nonjudgmental feedback. "When I read a piece of student writing, for example, I tell the student, This is what I heard, is that what you wanted to say?' My feedback is all about the message or the tone of the article."
When students become accustomed to nonjudgmental feedback, they learn to focus on the work, Brooks contends. Students become less concerned about how they fare "in the eyes of the judges" and more concerned with "pursuing excellence."
Teachers are then free, she adds, "to search for ways to use assessment to inform their next steps in the classroom," and to determine how to link students' interests to academic content standards. "This is tough," Brooks concedes. But it's well worth the effort, she asserts, "when we see how meager other measurements are."
Building Support
Although many teachers philosophically support using authentic assessments, practice has yet to catch up with theory, says Roger Farr, a professor of education at Indiana University. He predicts it will be difficult for teachers to forgo the convenience of traditional approaches to assessment, despite the research that makes evident the shortcomings of those approaches (see box). "The idea of performance assessments is popular, but slow to implement," he maintains.
McMillan agrees. "Assessment often becomes a very routine process for teachers," he says. "Some teachers may not consider the implications of what they're doing."
Those teachers should consider the evidence—look at examples of work by students whose teachers use assessment to serve instruction, says Brooks. When teachers see the high quality of the work and when they see what can happen when assessment and instruction are interwoven, they become convinced, she asserts.
Enthusiastic teachers—and equally excited students—can also engender parental support, which is crucial, say experts, if the move to authentic teaching and assessing is to be a lasting reform. And parents, says Farr, can be the toughest sell. "Most parents still want to see As, Bs, Cs, and high percentiles," he notes.
"Many parents are still asking for what they had," agrees Stewart. "And teachers don't do a good enough job of helping the public understand the importance of authentic assessment." Teachers, she observes, need to explain how "our expectations for students have changed, as have students themselves. And we need to show how authentic assessments can help students meet our expectations" and better prepare them for their futures.
Sylvia Peters, director of education for Sandtown-Winchester public schools in Baltimore, Md., maintains that when educators do things the public understands, finding support isn't difficult. "Everyone needs to know what's being taught," she says. "Assessment can be used as a tool to inform parents and garner their support."
In her district, for example, children write every day. At the end of the month, bundles of written work are sent home to parents. "You don't have to describe the writing process to them," says Peters. "Parents will see immediately the improvement in their child's writing from one month to the next."
Parents also understand enthusiasm, says Levy. "Kids go home excited and talk about school in ways they haven't heard before," he says. Although parents may initially worry that their children aren't learning enough, "when I show them what their kids are doing—the written work, the science experiments, and so on—parents are more than pleased. . . It's evident to them that something real is happening."
Assessing Traditional Assessments
Assessing Traditional Assessments
"I don't think there's any way to build a multiple-choice question that allows students to show what they can do with what they know," says Roger Farr, a professor of education at Indiana University.
Farr should know. During his 42-year career in education, he wrote portions of many of the national standardized tests used for high-stakes accountability assessments. What's interesting about such tests, Farr observes, is that when "bright, capable adults" take them, "they perform poorly on the sections of the test that students perform well on." For example, adults have difficulty with questions that require them to have memorized formulas or vocabulary. Adults do very well, he says, when they are required to remember basic concepts and to problem-solve. If it were true that what students learn through lecture and rote memorization is important, "then adults would remember that stuff."
"Just learning the facts doesn't mean you can apply them," Farr points out, and application is part of what he calls a "balanced" assessment. Another aspect of a balanced assessment includes helping students analyze their own performances, with improvement as the goal. "Students need to sit down and look at their work and see how they could have done better," Farr maintains.
ASCD Assessment Conference
ASCD Assessment Conference
Experts quoted in this article will be among the presenters at the ASCD Conference on Teaching and Learning: The Assessment-Instruction Connection which will take place October 23-25, 1997, in Orlando, Florida. Other presenters include Linda Darling-Hammond, Howard Gardner, Jay McTighe, Carol Ann Tomlinson, and Grant Wiggins. The registration fee is $399 for ASCD members and $449 for nonmembers. (If registrations are postmarked by July 15, the fees are $349 and $399, respectively.) For more information, contact ASCD's Service Center at 800-933-2723 or 703-549-9110, then press 2.
How Technology Can Improve Assessment
Imagine this: You're a teacher working at home one night, planning a lesson that will include a performance assessment. You need ideas, but it's really too late to call one of your colleagues. So, instead, you turn on your computer and pay a virtual visit to your school district's central office. There you find just what you need—a database full of lesson plans and performance assessments actually used by classroom teachers.
This scenario will soon be reality for teachers in the Caroline County (Md.) Public School System. A wide-area network—called an Intranet—links the 10 schools in the system with several databases, the central office, and the student data center. When teachers want to access any of these areas, they enter a password—their key to the virtual city.
"It's information on demand," says Steve Garner, director of instructional services for the Caroline County public schools. All the information any teacher would ever need—from lesson plans to model performance assessments to student achievement data—is linked together and immediately accessible.
Development of the Intranet is a result of efforts to align instruction and assessment in Caroline County with state standards, says Jim Orr, supervisor of instruction for Caroline County. About 1,000 performance activities have been written by teachers throughout the district over the past few years, he says. Now that these activities are collected in a central database, Orr predicts that the entire assessment process will be improved.
Teachers have different levels of expertise when it comes to performance assessment, he explains. The Intranet "is a place teachers know they can go and get answers in a user-friendly way—at a time that is convenient and comfortable for them." What's more, adds Orr, because the activities reflect state standards, what teachers find "are examples of what we say is good assessment in Caroline County."
Steve Garner and Jim Orr welcome your questions about how they developed their virtual city. Send e-mail messages to (sgarner@mail.cl.k12.md.us) or (jtorr@cl.k12.md.us).
