RE: Assessment

I think Ms.Commons has made an important distinction between assessment and testing.  As a classroom teacher, her comments on the assessment vs. testing of her students resonate strongly with me, as do the practical suggestions at the end of her response.  

State testing as it is now being administered is quite useless to the classroom teacher in addressing the needs of the children s/he now teaches.  The tests are given in the spring on traditional calendars, reported in the late summer, and give teachers information about how students performed in the last school year. Results are usually by grade level and subgroups. Dissemination by classes to the teachers who had these students last year is not an option that I?m aware of, and it wouldn?t help anyway because by the time we received the results those children would have moved on to another teacher.

Schools such as mine are trying to be thoughtful, responsive, and even proactive in the ongoing assessment of student results, and we strive to make this ongoing assessment drive our curriculum offerings, our special programs, our resources, and our personnel.  In our case the results that are available most frequently are classroom results.  Together in curricular teams, we begin by choosing content standards in three-month chunks, create assessments and rubrics to demonstrate mastery of the standards, and plan instructional activities to get students to the mastery demonstration.  After implementing each unit in our classrooms, we return to the group with our classroom results.  We record our results, and then begin the rigorous discussion of why we got those results.  Usually a rich instructional discussion ensues.  We finish by selecting models at each rubric level, and then tweak the unit for the next time based on our discussion.

Such assessment results included into the overall educational assessment and accountability program would certainly extend the information we receive about how and what California?s children are learning.  Providing the time and supportive culture that is needed to produce these results are part of the long-range planning that need to happen in ongoing assessment at the state level.