Common+Assessment

=Common Formative Assessment=

In order for the educators of the future to be able to adapt to an ever-changing world, they must be able to accurately assess student progress. An important tool in this process should be common formative assessment.

Diversity of Assessments
Despite the fact that teachers are highly educated individuals who care about their students, they still have a lot of differences. Some instructors like to lecture, others prefer to have group work, still others like students to take the initiative when learning. Assessments are no different and can range from small quizzes to comprehensive finals, use multiple choice or essay and even differ on what is important or not.

If a hundred educators were asked how they would allot 100 points for a test consisting of multiple choice, matching, short answer and essay, there would most likely be 100 different point set-ups. Some might emphasize rote knowledge found in multiple choice and matching while others enjoy the open-ended responses that are provided by short answer and essay. In addition to these two extremes (multiple choice or essay), there is a continuum of possibilities for educators when they are deciding where they want to weigh their exam.

For this reason, it is possible for different educators to ask the same exact questions and yet have the same exact student get a drastically different grade. For example, if teacher A puts all the weight in essays and Susie is bad at essays, it will bring down her grade. If teacher B, on the other hand, puts the weight in multiple choice, which Suzie excels at, it brings her grade up. Same student, same questions, but different assessment and different results. The only way to fix this broken system which has no reliability, is to ensure that when teachers assess students, they do so in a way that presents an accurate portrayal of where the student is and what they need to work on.

Formative vs. Summative Assessment
Imagine a patient who has not seen the doctor in a while but decides to go get a physical exam one day. When he or she arrives, they are told that they must immediately undergo an autopsy to see how their body is doing. What type of reaction would be expected out of the patient? This is how Doug Reeves explained the difference between formative (physical exam) and summative (autopsy) assessment (as cited in Rutherford County Teachers, 2008).

Obviously, if the patient is needing an autopsy, it is too late to save them. It is no different with summative assessment because by that point, the student has no chance to fix what they do not already know. Formative assessment on the other hand not only lets the teacher know where the student is, but allows time for the student to improve.

Using Common Formative Assessments to Help Students
In the book //Learning By Doing//, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker and Thomas Many stated that common formative assessment is:

//"An assessment typically created collaboratively by a team of teachers responsible for the same grade level or course. Common formative assessments are frequently administered throughout the year to identify (1) individual students who need additional time and support for learning, (2) the teaching strategies most effective in helping students acquire the intended knowledge and skills, (3) program concerns – areas in which students generally are having difficulty achieving the intended standard – and (4) improvement goals for individual teachers and the team// (as cited in Rutherford County Teachers, 2008)//."//

There are four important points to consider from this explanation. First that every student learns in a different way and in a different rate. This is part of the beauty of formative assessment because it gives you an instant snapshot of where each student is. By looking at what problems were missed by the whole it is possible to direct whole group learning, but it is also possible to analyze individual assessments in order to focus in on what certain students need.

Second, by having an entire department or school use the same assessment, weighted in the same way for the same material, it is possible to eliminate a lot of variables, such as question type, weighting, etc., that relate to student success. Once these variables are eliminated, it is possible for colleagues to sit down together and discuss how and why their scores are what they are. This is not meant to be a blame session where teachers who had low scores get lectured, but instead an opportunity for those who did well to discuss what it is that worked for them. Below is a video of faculty at Whittier schools looking at what worked and did not work on their most recent formative assessment:

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Third, as schools are increasingly trying to adhere to common core standards across the nation, it will behoove them to analyze how the students are exceeding, meeting or not meeting these standards and how this could be continued or resolved.

Fourth, if a teacher is repeatedly having issues with helping students achieve success, it might help for them to receive support from their colleagues. Any teacher would agree that it is often hard to accept criticism, so approaching an instructor with low test scores must be done in a professional manner that focuses on the students, rather than the pride of the faculty involved. It is important to remember that common formative assessment is not meant to be used for judging teachers, but instead, improving teachers and ensuring that good ideas get out into common practice.

Next: Mastery Based Education, a way to re-envision how school is structured