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A FAIR AND USEFUL ASSESSMENT SYSTEM

Recommendation 7:Develop an integrated and coherent assessment system that monitors programs as well as student learning and guides the provision of additional learning support.

A major aspect of the Working Group's deliberations about assessment concerned the development of an integrated, coherent system of assessment that could serve multiple purposes, avoid unnecessary cost and duplication, and support the learning outcomes we want for students. The principles for an assessment system below and the more detailed recommendations that follow can be best realized in a system with several parts: 1) a state system of program assessment; 2) local systems for individual student assessment; and 3) a shared system of state and local assessment for graduation based on exhibitions of performance, knowledge of content, and reflections on learning. Together, these assessments should have certain characteristics that support the State’s broad goals for its educational system. They should:

measure progress toward the full range of goals and standards;
be as authentic as possible (i.e. representing real performance tasks and situations);
measure higher order skills and abilities (e.g. ability to analyze, synthesize, apply knowledge in new situations, produce, create);
emphasize depth and power rather than breadth and surface knowledge;
be criterion-referenced, measuring and reporting what students have learned, rather than how they stand in relation to norms or other representations of the “bell curve”;^[9]
report progress beyond minimums toward higher levels of proficiency;
provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate their skills and knowledge, including different kinds of performances and multiple assessment strategies and measures that accommodate the diversity of communities and learners including students with disabilities;
provide multiple opportunities and occasions for assessment that allow students to demonstrate their proficiency and allow teachers to evaluate student growth in a longitudinal, cumulative fashion using several kinds of evidence (e.g. samples of work, observations, performance on tasks);
be as open as possible, with publicly known standards and rubrics rather than secret test items. The results and the test items themselves should be made available immediately and reported in ways that enable teachers to guide students and design further learning opportunities that allow students and families to take a more active role in directing their own learning;
allow for the determination of student accomplishment by exhibition of performance rather than course credits or seat time;
prohibit the use of a single measure to make high stakes decisions about students; important decisions, including course placement, grade retention, graduation, state scholarship funds, and college eligibility, must not be made solely on the basis of a test score.^[10]

These criteria are consistent with national trends and developments in the restructuring of assessment that are accompanying the restructuring of education. States across the nation—from New York to Minnesota and Vermont to Texas—are engaged in developing outcomes-oriented, performance-based assessment systems aimed at much more challenging skills, abilities, and learning goals.

The Working Group recommendations below generally favor local assessments when it comes to making important decisions that affect individual students. These local assessments are not only more accurate and fair to students, they can be profoundly powerful in affecting the overall understanding of local schooling—both within schools and in communities. Many of the recommendations bring teachers, school district officials, and the public into much more immediate contact with the relevance and appropriateness of local curriculum, pedagogy, and the assessment itself. As such, assessment can be seen as an adult-learning activity in its own right as well as adults learning about students. Since acquiring the skills and background for good assessment is a long-range, developmental process, this sustained examination keeps assessment from becoming “stale” and so automated that it ceases to promote the continual changes and “fine tuning” of educational programs. By contrast, single dimension statewide tests and publisher-designed tests inspire far less local commitment and are often seen as routine hurdles that take time away from teaching and engagement with families. The central dynamic for good assessment and maintaining high standards at the local level will be the interplay between the State’s reporting of aggregate data on multiple measures, local districts making sense of their own local performance measures, and schools, students and families contextualizing individual students’ performances within these broader reports.

Recommendation 7.1. The State should assess programs to monitor and report aggregate student performance.

The State's program assessments should be state-of-the art, leading good practice by modeling what is expected of districts and schools, including the use of projects, performance tasks, and other forms of authentic assessment. The State’s assessments should ultimately rely on multiple assessment strategies and tasks and use a set of performance standards that represent levels of performance across multiple domains of performance in each field. These levels of performance should be reported in concrete terms, describing the kinds of tasks students can perform at each level in ways that are understandable to students, parents, teachers, and the general public.

Recommendation 7.2: The State should charge local districts with developing their own assessment systems for providing information about and guiding instruction for individual students.

The State should provide school districts with benchmarks for developing internal assessment systems that include:

the state’s learning outcomes;
learning goals and standards developed at the local level that are consistent with and complementary to those of the State;
multifaceted and cumulative local assessments;
a range of performance modes that are based on multiple assessment strategies— including observation of students, samples of student work, and performance tasks; and
meeting the criteria for scope, authenticity, openness, and compatibility with higher learning goals.

Cumulative assessments of student progress and performance would be required for evaluation at each schooling level, e.g. early elementary, middle grades, high school. Local schools and districts should determine when these cumulative assessments occur. These assessments, which should include a portfolio of student work and evaluations of student performance, should be longitudinal in nature, taking student progress and individual talents into account along with levels of performance. Individual local student assessments should be used to inform and improve instruction, not to deny students access to further learning opportunities.

Recommendation 7.3: The State should establish an Assessment Quality Assurance Panel to evaluate both state and local assessment systems.

This Assessment Quality Assurance Panel should be comprised of representatives from higher education faculty senates and K-12 professional associations who bring appropriate curriculum and assessment expertise. This body would be charged with ensuring that both state and local assessment systems should meet established professional standards for assessment use. For example, no decision regarding a student should be made on the basis of a single piece of evidence (e.g. a test score). Decisions about students including placement or promotion decisions should be based on the use of at least three types of data and evidence: samples of student work, teacher observation, and performance tests or tasks.

The Panel should encourage local practitioners to develop innovative and thoughtful assessment programs by inviting local initiatives and supporting local development with assessment options. Among the resources the State can provide is access to a portfolio or bank of assessment ideas, tasks, and instruments that have been developed through state and national projects (e.g. the New Standards Project, the California Learning Record). The State's role should be to support districts in developing these systems and to provide assessment options, along with research and information about assessment strategies and issues. The State would not prescribe the assessments districts must use. However, the State should proscribe appropriate and inappropriate uses of tests as part of its role to evaluate and ensure the appropriateness of local systems.

Recommendation 7.4: The State should develop graduation standards and performance-based methods by which students demonstrate their competencies in consultation with experts from higher education and local school districts, as appointed by their respective academic senates, and with the participation of California’s diverse communities.

The graduation standards, derived from the State's learning standards, should specify the kinds of competencies students must demonstrate to graduate. Achievement of these competencies should be documented through both the California Exit Exam and a Graduation Portfolio—a compilation of record data, projects, products, performance tests or tasks, observations and evaluations by teachers, attestations, and other evidence that the competencies have been achieved. As in European examination systems, exam scores would be part of a student’s record. This would comprise a portion of the Exit Exam rating, but should not be used as the sole basis for a decision about whether a student will graduate from high school.

The actual form, content, and assessment of the portfolio requirements should be developed locally. The graduation portfolio should grow out of and be related to the cumulative assessment strategies used throughout the earlier grades by the local school or district. The school's assessment system should allow for the accumulation of portfolio credits throughout the students' high school years until graduation. Schools should be encouraged to engage their faculties in collaborative development of portfolio standards and benchmarks. Team evaluations of student work should be encouraged, as this approach enriches the assessment process by marshalling multiple viewpoints and varied perspectives.

While the graduation portfolio would be developed locally, districts should have the option of satisfying portions of their portfolio requirements by selecting from existing state developed assessments and other options the State makes available. Performance-based options (e.g. projects, performance tasks, and portfolios) for all examinations should be developed immediately for districts that want to implement them

Recommendation 7.5: The State will develop reports of student performance which describe how many students can actually perform particular kinds of tasks and at what levels, rather than assigning a numerical score that has no substantive meaning to students, families, teachers, or the public.

Reporting of student performance results will need to change alongside the reforms in assessment. One necessary change will be the reporting of assessment information according to different criterion-referenced performance levels pegged to the kinds of learning outcomes they reflect, rather than norm-referenced percentile rankings. We should know, for example, that 80 percent of students can write a persuasive essay that uses evidence effectively, rather than that the average California student scored a 72 on a particular test.

Recommendation 7.6: The State should develop, legislate, and fund the implementation of a non-voluntary, longitudinal student data system that enables the State and schools to do the following:

evaluate student progress toward meeting the standards, using measures that assess the contribution of the current year of schooling to students’ growth;

identify and examine the factors that promote access to high-quality resources, opportunity to master content standards, and significantly increased achievement for all students at key transition points in the system.

The State’s assessment system must allow for reporting on progress towards standards that are based on aggregated longitudinal data about individual students. Data should allow for analysis of how much actual growth in performance students have achieved, rather than averaging school-level data that is influenced by shifts in student population and other factors.

An integrated longitudinal data system will enable the State and schools to assess students’ achievement over time, and to identify and examine the factors that promote access, opportunity to learn, and success for all students at key transition points in the system. An integrated PreK-16 student information system includes student demographics, linguistic status, history of schools attended (including opportunities to learn and performance history), regional differences in attainment, etc., as well as multiple measures of student learning. This information is crucial to understand the flow of all students (including English language learners and immigrant students) through the educational continuum.

This type of comprehensive data system, currently being constructed as the California School Information System (CSIS), should constitute the foundation of the State’s future ability to “identify and examine the factors that promote access, opportunity to learn, and success for all students” as the charge states here. All California schools and districts must participate in the CSIS. This universal participation is necessary for the State to analyze and report students’ learning growth over time, and to identify and examine the state and local factors that affect access, opportunity to learn, and achievement for all students at key transition points in the system.

Recommendation 7.7: The State should require that reports of student performance should describe the programmatic context in which student outcomes are achieved.

A new form of what the State now presents as its state reports should emphasize descriptive information about school practices, instructional programs, staffing, and other aspects of students' learning opportunities. This report should be built upon the evidence developed in the school quality review process. Reporting should also include analysis of funding, resources, and allocations of expenditures between schools and districts as well as among expenditure categories.

The state report should provide descriptive data about school programs and related student outcomes. For example, an analysis of assessment data in mathematics should describe the kinds of mathematical tasks students are able to accomplish, the number of students taking mathematics courses, and interventions provided at the earliest grade level to increase student learning.^[1]

The goal of the reporting system should be to enhance accountability by providing information that will enable the public to evaluate how well the State and districts are progressing toward attainment of California's goals for outcomes, practices, and resource equity, and also to analyze how and why.

Recommendation 7.8: The State develop, fund, and implement state and local communication strategies to ensure that educational personnel, students and their families understand the meaning of test results (scores and performance levels) and their implications for students’ educational performance, quality and choices.

The State will provide prototypical information for teachers, counselors, and administrators to use in explaining and interpreting test results to families. Included in this kit are suggestions, options, resources, assistance, and interventions to inform and support families with their children’s educational performance, quality, and choices.

Table of Contents
Summary	Introduction	Goals/Curriculum	Opportunities
Assessment	Accountability	Access	Members