How To Use Assessments To Inform Instruction

The Stronge and Associates team shares how to use assessment data to modify your instruction, interpret test scores, and apply student data to learning goals.

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.

Using clear explanations and cases, this must-have resource shows how formative assessment can improve student learning. Included are lesson plans and ideas for easy implementation.

Presents a variety of assessments, lesson plans, and activities for use across the curriculum.

A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Assessment is acomprehensive guide that shows step-by-step how to effectivelyintegrate assessment into the classroom. Written for both new andseasoned teachers, this important book offers a practical aid fordeveloping assessment skills and strategies, building assessmentliteracy, and ultimately improving student learning. Based on extensive research, this book is filled withillustrative, down-to-earth examples of how classroom assessmentworks in classrooms where assessment drives the instruction. Theauthors present the Classroom Assessment Cycle—Clarifyinglearning targets, Collecting assessment evidence, Analyzingassessment data, and Modifying instruction based upon assessmentdata—that demonstrates how one assessment action must flowinto the next to be effective. Each chapter details the kinds ofassessment evidence that are the most useful for determiningstudent achievement and provides instruction in the analysis ofassessment data.

How can we help teachers use classroom assessments to gather appropriate evidence for all valued learning goals, and to use those assessments not just to measure learning but to promote it? This book provides an answer in a practical, proven, and principled Assessment Planning Framework that moves away from solely multiple-choice tests toward a wide range of approaches to classroom assessment activities, including performance-based assessments. The Framework examines four different types of learning goals, considers various purposes and audiences for assessment information, reviews five categories of classroom assessment methods, and presents options for communicating actionable results. To the authors, the primary purpose of classroom assessment is to inform teaching and learning, rather than simply to assign grades. This concise resource will be a reliable go-to reference for teachers, school leaders, mentors, and coaches in guiding classroom assessment practices and understanding their underlying principles. Book Features: Builds on the classic book Understanding by Design, written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.Offers a practical, nontechnical presentation appropriate for teacher preparation and busy practitioners (K–16).Explores different purposes for, and methods of, classroom assessment and grading.Addresses assessment of academic standards as well as transdisciplinary outcomes, such as 21st-century skills.Describes the principles and practices underlying standards-based grading.

This book focuses on interim and formative assessments as distinguished from the more usual interest in summative assessment. I was particularly interested in seeing what the experts have to say about a full system of assessment. This book has particular interest in what information a teacher, a school or even a state could collect that monitors the progress of a student as he or she learns. The authors were asked to think about assessing the effects of teaching and learning throughout the student’s participation in the curriculum. This book is the product of a conference by the Maryland Assessment Research Center for Education Success (MARCES) with funding from the Maryland State Department of Education.