Pathway to Learning

Philosophy of AssessmentVern Mills

Ed Psych 510

ESEA of 1965

• Push towards High stakes Assessments– ITBS– CTBS– WASL– MSP– SBAC

“Good Schools” vs. “Under Performing School” You did well, or …. Is an assessment once a year really an effective

measure of what students really learned?

Assessments along the way

• Tests for Grades– Weekly tests– Spelling tests– Math tests– Unit tests

If we don’t assess how can we grade?

Assessments For Services

• Cognitive Assessments• Academic Assessments• Specific Services OT,PT, SLP

• Qualify you into or out of services

The Cycle of Learning adapted from Papham

Instruction

Content

Assessment

Decisions

Summative Assessments

• Unit tests• Semester tests

• End of Course tests

• It’s Data, but can it really help me in the here and now?

Formative Assessments: The Real Work of Teachers

• Formative assessments inform our instruction daily- tasting the soup vs. eating the soup

• Can help in the middle of a lesson, thumbs up/down

• Entry/exit tasks, do they remember, do they understand

• Quickly accessible data that we can use to differentiate instruction in the here and now to improve our practice as well as student learning.

Formative Assessments: The Real Work of Teachers

• Measures of Academic Progress – Vertically aligned assessment.

• Review of previously taught material. Do they still have it?

• Common Assessments- Where the real work begins!

• Use of the Common Assessments in a Data teams to look at specific skills and specific students and best practices.

Where are you?

Non-negotiatables

• Data, Data, Data!• Use of a specific template to guide our meetings.• Expectation that student work will be presented and

used.• Teachers bring data.• What did we do differently? What can I do to improve

my instruction?• Creation of SMART goals.• Let the teacher needs guide the work in the meeting if it

is moving us down the road of improvement as a team.

Lean on Me

• Data team meetings set up in advance.• There will be a template or format for the

meeting to help guide our process. • Plans made and followed through on.• I will be part of the team, not a bystander.• I am a resource to assist you in finding what

you need! I will beg, borrow or steal what you need if you think it will help.

Skills vs. Growth

Skills Growth

Student Growth Percentiles are each students individual pathway to success!Strategically picking individual students or groups of students that are close to making that next level. Also keeping an eye on those students that made very little growth when compared to their peers with the same score the previous year.

Reality isn’t always easy,But it sure feels great when you get there!