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Classroom Assessment Practices

NEA has long supported comprehensive assessment of students' learning. In fact, NEA policy states that "a student's level of performance is best assessed with authentic measures directly linked to the lessons teachers teach and the materials teachers use." Arguably the most authentic measures available to teacher are their own classroom assessments. But in age of accountability, with its emphasis on commercially developed tests, classroom assessment tends to take a back seat .

Aligning Classroom Assessment with State/Local Student Standards

According to Richard Stiggins, director of the Assessment Training Institute, Portland, Oregon, and a leading authority on classroom assessment, teachers can and should use their own classroom tests, quizzes, performance assessments, etc. to help their students meet state and/or local achievement standards. To do this, teachers need to align their classroom assessments to the standards. This doesn't mean that they should develop "their own mini-versions of state assessments." Instead, Stiggins argues, teachers can transform state and/or local standards into classroom achievement targets, and in turn, transform those achievement targets into classroom assessments. Here's how:

First teachers identify the building blocks of competence that underpin, or provide the scaffolding that enables students, to meet the state standard. They do this by answering four questions:

• What must my students know and understand to meet this standard?
• What patterns of reasoning must they master, if any, to meet it?
• What performance skills must they master, in any, to be able to demonstrate proficiency?
• What products must they be able to create, if any, to meet the standard? 

The answers to these questions provide teachers with a picture of the (1) knowledge and understanding, (2) reasoning, (3) performance skills, and (4) products that are related to, or necessary, for achieving the standard. In other words, by engaging in this analysis and Q&A activity, teachers transform the standard into achievement targets they can now teach and assess. 

Here are two examples of state standards that teachers have transformed into classroom achievement targets. 

1. Sample state history standard

Students will evaluate different interpretations of historical events.
To attain this standard, students must master the following building block competencies:  

Knowledge and understanding:
Students must know and understand each historical event (either outright or through the use of reference material to retrieve the required knowledge) and must understand each of the alternative interpretations to be evaluated.

Reasoning:
Evaluative reasoning requires judgment about the quality of each interpretation. Thus students must demonstrate both an understanding of the criteria by which one judges the quality of an interpretation and the ability to apply the criteria.

Performance skills: None required

Products: None required 
 

2. Sample state writing standard

Students will use styles appropriate for their audience and purpose, including proper use of voice, word choice, and sentence fluency.
To attain this standard, students must master the following building block competencies:

Knowledge and understanding: Students must understand the concept of style as evidenced in voice, word choice, and sentence structure. In addition, students must possess knowledge of the topic they are to write about.

Reasoning: Students must be able to figure out how to make sound voice, word choice, and sentence construction decisions while composing original text. The assessment must provide evidence of this ability.

Performance skills: Students must either write longhand or compose text on a keyboard. Each requires its own kind of skill competence.

Products: The final evidence of competence will be written products that present evidence of the ability to write effectively to different audiences.

Aligning Achievement Targets with Assessment Methods 

Once teachers have developed a list of the prerequisite knowledge and understanding, reasoning, performance skills, and products needed to attain the standard, they can begin to consider the kinds of classroom assessments they might use to assess students' progress in meeting these prerequisites. 

There are four assessment options:

Selected Response Assessment. This is the classic objectively scored paper and pencil test. The student is asked a series of questions, which: (a) are either accompanied by a range of alternative responses as in multiple-choice and matching items; or (b) require very brief answers that are counted right or wrong, as in true-false items or short answer fill-in items.

Essay Assessments. The student is provided with an exercise (or set of exercises) that calls for preparation of an extended written answer. He or she might be asked to answer a question or provide an explanation of a solution to a complex problem. Open-ended math problems, where students are asked to show all work, also fall into this category. 

Performance Assessments and Products. Assessments in which the student actually carries out a specified activity under the watchful eye of an evaluator, who observes the performance and makes judgments as to the quality of the achievement demonstrated, fall into this category. Performance assessments can be based either on observation of the process while skills are being demonstration, or on an evaluation of the product created. 

Personal Communication. One of the most common ways teachers gather information about student achievement, personal communication includes questions posed and answered during instruction, interviews, conferences, conversations, and listening during class discussions. The teacher typically listens to responses and either tallies them right or wrong if correctness if the criterion, or evaluates them according to some quality criterion. 

Once they have a good sense of their assessment options, teachers can match the four different kinds of achievement targets-knowledge and understanding, reasoning, performance skills, and products-with the four kinds of assessment methods-selected response, essay, performance assessment/products, and personal communication. Here is some general guidance about these matches:

Assessing Knowledge and Understanding

Selected Response. Multiple-choice, true/false, matching, and fill-in questions can sample mastery of elements of knowledge Essay. Exercises can tap understanding of relationships among elements of knowledge

Performance Assessment and Products. This is not a good choice for this achievement target.

Personal Communication. Can ask students questions, evaluate answers, and infer mastery. This is a time-consuming option for assessing students' knowledge and understanding.

Assessing Reasoning

Selected Response. Can assess students' application of some patterns of reasoning.

Essay. Written descriptions of complex problems solutions can provide a window into students' reasoning.

Performance Assessment. Can watch student solve problems or examine some products and infer about reasoning proficiency.

Personal Communication: Can ask student to "think aloud" or can ask follow-up questions to probe reasoning.

Assessing Performance Skills

Selected Response and Essay. Can assess mastery of understandings prerequisite to skillful performance, but cannot rely on these to tap the skill itself. 

Performance Assessment. Can observe and evaluate skills as they are being performed.

Personal Communication. A Strong match when skill is oral communication proficiency; also can assess mastery of knowledge prerequisite to skillful performance.

Assessing Ability To Create Products

Selected Response. Can only assess mastery of the understandings prerequisite to the ability to create quality products.

Essay. Can assess mastery of knowledge prerequisite to product development; brief essays can provide evidence of writing proficiency.

Performance Assessment. Can assess proficiency in carrying out steps in product development, and the attributes of the product itself. 

Personal Communication. Can probe procedural knowledge and knowledge of attributes of quality products, but not product quality.

Is Alignment Easy?

No, it's not as easy as this discussion may suggest. First, teachers need considerable subject matter and instructional expertise to transform state and local standards into achievement targets they can use in their classrooms. Second, they need to be "assessment literate" and know, for example, that each assessment method has its own rules of evidence related to drawing confident conclusions about student achievement, and each has "sources of bias that can distort the results and mislead users." (Stiggins  2001)