Testing Anyone?

My granddaughter in grade who lives with us has taken 4 assessments in the three weeks. Probably two in math and two in reading. These tests are "interim" assessments. One I think was the NWEA test. We have no idea how she performed on the assessments. We have no idea if she performed below or above her peers, so we have no idea if what we are doing to help her at home is benefitting her. 

Unfortunately, teachers do not set the assessment policies and practices used in the schools to provide information that can help the teachers and the parents do better. So why are these assessments being administered? Certainly, it is not to inform parents of their child's performance or progress, if no reports are sent home. 

One assessment used in North Carolina is the NC Check-In Tests. While the teachers do get item-level response information, the tests frequently in math only test a sliver of what was taught in the 9 weeks leading up to the testing. Also, in some grades, the average percent correct on these 25 item tests may be somewhere near 40% on some tests. So what does that information tell a teacher? It is too late after the scores come back to do anything about the lack of mastery on a skill six weeks after the skill was taught. 

 Another assessment is the I_READY test. It is an adaptive online test that provides math scores in four strands. Teachers receive no information about how a student performs on each of the state curriculum strands, nor does it provide item-level results. It seems that the primary purpose of this test administered three times a year is to meet the universal screener requirement for the MTSS process. Again, teachers really don't know how to interpret the results.     

In a recent data focus session with a school improvement team, the focus turned to what can teachers do to use assessment to really drive instruction and identify instructional and learning problems. The answer is simple and it has been in use by high-performing teachers for the last two decades or more. The "silver bullet" is informative assessment, which really is just collecting and ACTING on daily data collection, or more precisely, data collected DURING instruction. 

So in the next post, I will explain assessment and the practice of informative assessment.