Assessment, Accountability & Data Use conference

Last week I had the great privilege to be able to attend an assessment conference at Michigan State University. Keynote speaker Dr. Stiggins introduced the conference, "Re-envisioning Assessment, Accountability and Data Use to Support Schools". The conference had a unique format of having four different expert panelists present information to the audience about information and current trends in assessment.
Having had the privilege of being able to go to multiple conferences across the nation in my short career, I must say that every aspect of this conference was spectacular. The panelists gave useful and cutting edge information, the format kept the conference fresh and invigorating, and the keynote speaker was beyond inspirational and truly struck a nerve in everyone who attended the conference.

For this blog, I would like to summarize some of the information that was presented. To help organize the events, I will break them up into the keynote speaker and the four panels of experts; formative assessment*, teacher evaluation, parent and public use of data, and data assessment and Teacher Education.

*I put the formative assessment session and the data assessment session together because they covered similar information. 

Keynote Speaker

As a keynote speaker, Rick Stiggins, a man who has dedicated his life to creating quality assessments, was a phenomenal and inspirational speaker. Rick descended upon the education community by referring to it as an institution that is wrongly believed to have quality assessments. He respectfully challenged the audience to rethink the way we design assessments and wanted us to truly reflect on the purpose of assessments. Dr. Stiggins said it best: "decisions will be made based on these crucial assessments." Another major point that Dr. Stiggins made was that to be able to create a strong assessment, we need to set a clear purpose and target and create an assessment around it.

With Dr. Stiggins' strong words, he advocated us to take a more conscientious roll in designing and administering assessments. He questioned the way we have been assessing students and asked us to ponder how we can improve upon these old ways. He asked us to grow as individuals, grow as a profession and grow as a community. 

Session 1: FAME

This first panel was headed by principals and consultants who have implemented FAME (Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators) into their districts. They spoke on the value of having groups of educators come together and discuss formative assessments, how to implement them effectively, and how to use the data to strengthen instruction. This panel gave us insight on how the FAME groups are working together and able to use their information productively to drive instruction. 

Formative assessments (unlike summative assessments) are an ongoing process that consists of teachers and students interacting with one another throughout a unit of instruction. It is a process used during instruction that provides feedback to adjust teaching and learning to improve each student's achievement. Educators in classrooms are constantly using formative assessment, but the FAME groups help monitor the Formative assessments and look at how we can use the data in an effective way.

Here is a list of some of the different aspects of FAME groups and what they should be focusing on during their meetings:

• FAME groups should be between 6-8 members. 
• They should be lead be a facilitator and meet multiple times throughout the year. 
• FAME groups discussions are to be lead by and decided upon by the group rather than an administrator.
• The learning group should focus on matters such as strong learning directions so students understand what is being asked of them and that students know what the criteria is for success. 
• They should target key standards and identify them on assessments as well as projects.

Session 2: Teacher Evaluation

This panel was made up of principals and superintendents from around the state. The major focus of this group was that teacher evaluations, although they hold a great deal of power, do not always translate to how effective a teacher truly is and how they can improve upon their craft. The discussions were on how we can better implement teaching evaluations to improve teaching. Here are a few ideas and questions that arose from this debate:

• Have 4-6, 15 minute teacher evaluations throughout the year rather than two 60 minute evaluations.
• Teacher evaluations need to provide relevant feedback that is relevant to the instructor.
• Paras/students/parents should be filling out evaluation forms as well, as they are interacting with the teachers on a more consistent basis than the administrator. 
• How do we adapt state/district level testing to make it a more realistic assessment in the classroom?

Session 3: Parent and public use of data

The panel for the parent and public use of data panel was very unique and because, of that fact, very informative. The panel consisted of 3 members. One was reporter Dustin Dwyer from NPR, who wrote a piece on a low performing school Grand Rapids, Mi. The second panelist was Dan Varner, a member of the Michigan board of education and on board as an assessment tool for some schools in Detroit, MI. The last panel member was a parent advocate from Kentucky. I'm only going to focus on panelists Dave and Dustin for the blog. 

The reporter from NPR discussed his intense look into a third grade classroom at Congress Elementary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He summarized his 50 minute piece by discussing that we put too much faith in how well a 8 year old child does on a single test. He went on to talk about his experience of sitting in a classroom for 6 weeks. Test results did not even scratch the surface on what was going on in the school. There is a great summarizing quote from Mrs. Howard (the third grade teacher he observed) about how to really find out how good a school is. "I tell them first of all, come visit us. See what we do every day, moderately talk to us about the curriculum. Talk to us about the Common Core state standards that we’re implementing. And just have them talk to other parents who have had their children here for a period of time, who can tell them what we do and the proficiency levels of those kids."

Panelist Dave Varner from the Michigan board of education focused on the system that they have implemented to rate schools in Detroit. Detroit is a rarity because all the schools (charter or not) are school of choice as long as you live within the city. To get an accurate reading of each school's performance, they created a scorecard. The scorecards are easily accessible and readable by the public. They earn a letter grade on academic performance, academic progress and school climate. These grades are based on a number of different details and walk throughs made by community members.
Here is video by Dan Varner that better explains the score card and the benefits of using one. 

Conclusion

As I stated in the introduction, this was truly an inspiring conference that I was luckily able to attend. The conference not only give great information on how we can improve our assessments on different levels, but it left an imprint on myself on how we can do better assessments so that we can benefit our instruction. I have come away feeling more alert and aware on what should drive the assessments I use and create. I am motivated to try and find what my assessments are asking and are truly assessing what I am teaching in my classes. It is so easy to blindly give out these tests to students and then give them a grade. As educators, we should not be using assessments/grades in this way. Using assessments in this way makes the grades we give and the data we use to make "crucial decisions" useless.
Assessments should be used to show journeys of knowledge, not just accountability. As a special education teacher, I believe our field is more accustomed to showing growth and progress rather than just a standard grade. But I do not think our system is foolproof in any stretch of the imagination. We as educators need to come together, in small and large scales, to really take a deeper look at our assessments and how we can best use them to drive/improve our instruction.

Website of the Day:

Here is a website for teaching materials that I use on a weekly basis. They have a bundle of free worksheets, games, rewards and other tools that you can download once you register for free on the site.

Quote of the Day:

“If you don’t know where you are headed, you’ll probably end up someplace else.” 

-Douglas J. Eder, Ph.D