Key Action II.2

Determine the plan for assessment and grading

What is the goal?

The goal of this key action is to clarify the expectations for assessment and grading in the newly adopted instructional materials. This step comes before pacing because fundamental decisions need to be made about assessment strategy before the implementation support team can make decisions about planning.

Why this key action is important

The instructional materials strategy and assessment strategy for a school or district/charter network must be connected. Instructional materials guide what is taught; assessments measure what students have learned. There is no way to successfully support implementation of instructional materials that does not couple with a careful review to ensure the alignment of the assessment strategy. Two common missteps cause considerable challenge for teachers in the intersection between instructional materials and assessments: 1) instructional leaders try to make the curriculum match existing assessments—because instructional materials are so deliberately and intentionally sequenced, instructional leaders will find it much easier to align the assessment strategy to the materials (rather than adjusting the materials to the assessments—and 2) instructional leaders layer on additional assessments without first considering the purposes the curriculum-embedded assessments could serve—districts/charter networks often spend considerable money and time designing item banks or procuring additional assessments without realizing how many assessments are already in their curriculum. This often leads to teachers administering multiple assessments for the same purpose, which is confusing for both students and teachers. Instructional leaders can preempt this challenge by proactively looking at how assessments will interact and sending clear messages to teachers about expectations for use. Similarly, students and parents often experience the materials for the first time in the form of grades; being proactive about what will be graded and how can make this transition easier.

Explanation of language

We use the expression assessment purposes to describe why the assessment is being given in the first place. We use the expression common assessments to describe assessments that are expected to be taken at the same time and in the same way across an entire school or district/charter network.

steps

guiding questions

notes & resources

  • 1.
    Is there an end of year assessment?
  • 2.
    What does it assess?
  • 3.
    How is it designed?
  • 4.
    What kind of information will this assessment give teachers?
  • 5.
    How is this similar or different than our state test?
  • Have the team take the assessments individually (perhaps outlining instead of writing full essays) to understand the mental work required.
  • Study one grade or one grade per grade band if there are significant differences (e.g., K–2 and 3–5 ELA will likely look different).
  • Not every curriculum has (or needs to have) a culminating performance task for the year.
  • The resource Agenda for Assessment Study has an agenda and sample email that you can adapt to facilitate this meeting.
  • It can be tempting to become a literalist in assessment format and lose the big picture of the kind of content work that the state test requires. That is the work students need daily practice with in a variety of formats. Don’t get too caught up in format differences.
  • 6.
    Are there end of module/unit assessments?
  • 7.
    What do they assess?
  • 8.
    How are they designed?
  • 9.
    What information will the end of module/unit assessments give teachers?
  • The end of module/unit assessments are the assessments that most early implementers chose to have all teachers complete in common.
  • Have the team take the assessments individually to understand the mental work required.
  • If the difficulty of the assessment causes feelings of fear and concern, go back to your core beliefs in Step I.2.B: Articulate the vision of instruction  and allow time to process, but persevere. Follow the Guide for Discussing Assessment for managing emotions.
  • 10.
    Within a module/unit, what assessments are included?
  • 11.
    What do they assess?
  • 12.
    How are they designed?
  • 13.
    What information will the assessments within modules/units give teachers?
  • Assessments within modules/units vary considerably across different materials.
  • Have the Implementation Support Team take the assessments to understand the mental work required.
  • 1.
    What are our key purposes for assessments?
  • 2.
    What are all the assessments that students in our district/charter network currently take and how often do they take them?
  • 3.
    What purpose(s) does each assessment serve?
  • 4.
    What is the quality of each assessment?
  • 5.
    What do we do with the data from each assessment?
  • Use the Assessment Inventory Template to develop your inventory, and take a look at the Completed Assessment Inventory for a completed example.
  • This step is typically completed by the district/charter network team, but can be replicated at each school if schools have added additional assessments.
  • Your inventory will likely vary by subject and grade. The Implementation Support Team can complete the inventory for the grade they have studied, but ensure that the same study is conducted for other grades.
  • At the highest level, early implementers in ELA found it helpful to focus on quality texts and quality items. In math, they focused on quality items and standards being assessed at the right level of rigor.
  • 6.
    Are there any purposes that we lack assessments for at this time?
  • Research shows that students do benefit from one full-length practice test to understand the format and layout, but they don’t need every assessment to reflect the same structure and model. In fact, they learn more from experiencing a variety of item types.
  • 7.
    What purposes can the curriculum-embedded assessments we studied serve?
  • 8.
    Are there any assessments that have redundant purposes that we can discontinue?
  • 9.
    Are there any assessments that have overlapping purposes? What is the best course of action?
  • 10.
    Which assessments are we going to administer across the district/charter network in each grade?
  • Simplifying the number of assessments allows for more time on instruction and more time to process and use the data you get from the assessments students are taking.
  • Curriculum-embedded assessments serve a different purpose than interims or summatives. They give shorter-cycle feedback (e.g., at the end of a unit) on student understanding of the standards and content, often highlighting student misconceptions.
  • In grades 3+, teachers often desire to blend the curriculum-embedded assessments with sample state test items to give some format experience. In assessment design, the design of the item is quite complex, and altering items to make them look like state assessments (such as making them multiple choice) will affect the validity and reliability of the item. It is better to keep items intact and draw from different sources (e.g., pull some state test items into the curriculum assessment) than to adjust the design of the items themselves.
  • 1.
    What assessments are we going to administer across the district/charter network?
  • 2.
    What is the purpose each assessment is seeking to serve?
  • 3.
    Is each assessment high quality? How do we know?
  • 4.
    What will we do with the results from each assessment?
  • 5.
    What feedback will students get from each assessment?
  • 6.
    When will we give each assessment?
  • Do this first for the grade(s) you are studying, then determine the plan to get answers for all other grades.
  • The Assessment Purpose Template can help you organize your answers, and includes a few sample responses.
  • These questions often need to be considered at both the district/charter network and school levels.
  • Make sure to bring teacher voice into this discussion. The natural inclination is to make testing decisions based on what the district/charter network needs (predictive and evaluative data for summatives), but not necessarily for what the teacher needs (instructional data). Many districts/charter networks had success getting teacher input on shared interim assessments and having teacher leaders define formative assessment practices.
  • These conversations often bring up different ideas about the kind of test prep that is necessary for state tests—that may or may not reflect good research. This resource has summaries of the research around test prep that may be helpful to the conversation.
  • 7.
    For each assessment, will we collect the data centrally? If so, how?
  • There are a number of platform providers that are able to import your assessments directly and help with administration and roll up.
  • 8.
    How will results get reported?
  • Be careful in standards-based reporting for ELA—this is not reflective of how the state test is designed or how students learn to read.
  • 9.
    For each assessment, what do we expect teachers to do with the data?
  • 10.
    How will we know if that is happening?
  • 1.
    What is our district/charter network/school grading policy, if any, for this subject/grade band?
  • 2.
    What assignments in this curriculum do we expect to be graded?
  • 3.
    What questions will come up about how to grade these assignments? What are our answers to these questions?
  • 4.
    What other questions will come up about grading? How will we handle them?
  • Make sure the team has done the work of Steps II.2.A–II.2.C before tackling grading. Grading decisions should be made in the larger context of a defined assessment strategy. In considering what to grade, review your formative assessment list.
  • Though curriculum developers tend to produce a fair amount of guidance on use and pacing, they rarely provide guidance or support on how to handle grading. Occasionally, there will be rubrics and sample student work, but there is a lot of judgment that teachers and leaders need to make to match the curriculum to your grading policy.
  • The resource Common Grading Challenges includes frequent issues that come up in grading and options for how to approach them.
  • 1.
    In this key action, we reviewed the assessment and grading plan. What are the next steps that we need to take based on the decisions we made together?
  • 2.
    What can we add to our roles and responsibilities tracker?
  • Go back to your Implementation Plan to track your next steps and add to your roles and responsibilities tracker.
  • 3.
    What training will all teachers using this curriculum need prior to launching the materials in order to be ready for their assessment and grading responsibilities?
  • 4.
    What training will all leaders supporting this curriculum need prior to launching the materials to be ready for their assessment and grading responsibilities?
  • Throughout Phase II, you will track the training needs at the end of every step, and in Key Action II.5: Determine the plan for training teachers and leaders, you will prioritize and sequence these needs.
  • Remember to track all of the needs as you go in your Implementation Plan.
  • 5.
    What will each identified stakeholder group want to know about assessment and grading?
  • 6.
    How do we plan to proactively communicate this information? Who will deliver the communication? When?
  • 7.
    What questions do we expect we will get? How will we answer them?
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Workbook

This workbook is designed to help a school or system leadership team work through the implementation process together. Assemble your team, print or download the workbook, find your starting point, and dig in together.

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