classrooms.
However, when we blend academic assessment with behavioral assessment and practice data with summative data and report it as a single code or number, we are unable to offer feedback specific enough to be helpful, which creates a world empty of true formative assessment and neglects our learners’ intellectual needs. We may also prevent students from understanding where they are going and how close they are to getting there, and eliminate their ability to self-assess. Mixing academic, behavioral, process, and product goals together into one measure makes instructional agility—an intentional instructional adjustment a teacher makes in response to assessment evidence—next to impossible, and it muddies our reporting practices. As Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe (2006) point out, “A grade should give as clear a measure as possible of the best a student can do. Too often, grades reflect an unknown mixture of multiple factors…. How effective is such a communication system?” (p. 133).
The solution is to start by being crystal clear about what we are assessing and to assess it using concise criteria so teachers, students, and families know what is being explored and what proficiency will look like when it happens. Ken O’Connor (2007) asserts, “Students and parents need to understand that achieving in school is not about only ‘doing the work’ or accumulating points…. We want students to understand that school is about learning” (p. 6). Unpacking or unwrapping learning goals is important so we can first clarify for ourselves what we want students to know and then preassess our learners to gauge their foundational readiness and possession of the needed building blocks for the academic learning journey. This process also allows us to be crystal clear about the targets we set along the way that will support our learners to meet them. Throughout this book, I will use the terms targets, “I can” statements, and stepping stones to refer to the distinct skills and knowledge students will need to learn and develop as they work toward the larger learning goals. We identify these skills and knowledge when we unpack the learning goals. Being clear about these items by unpacking them from the learning goal allows us to recognize when a student is proficient and ready to engage in enriched learning opportunities. After unpacking or unwrapping our learning goals, we can be sure that when we measure a student’s progress toward the goals, we know we have captured exactly that and nothing else.
At the same time, we can also evaluate students’ growth of skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. These behaviors and competencies should be assessed and reported separately from academic goals, but teachers must similarly clarify the criteria for proficiency. Being clear about what we are assessing is essential to assessing it accurately and reliably and reporting it clearly, transparently, and accessibly.
How Are We Assessing?
Tom Schimmer (2014) reminds us, “The reality is that all assessment methods have their place in a balanced assessment process, but the learning target needs to be matched with the assessment method that will most accurately allow students to show what they know” (p. 42). There is no single way to assess learning, and this allows us to meet multiple student needs with a softened edge. However, to avoid assessment methods that are disconnected from our learning goals, we must first clarify what we are assessing before we determine how best to do so. At the heart of assessment is clarity, and we can only achieve this clarity by choosing assessment methods that invite students to demonstrate the skills and knowledge articulated in the learning goals. Furthermore, we also need to ensure our assessment results are reliable, so measuring our goals on more than one occasion to confirm the accuracy of our assessments is optimal.
Once we know why and what we are assessing and we engage in it when it makes sense and in a way that honors our learners, the options for how we assess open up. Selected-answer questions, open-ended questions, performance tasks, demonstrations, and discussions are just some options. If we are formatively assessing the smaller building blocks of a learning goal, for example, we may decide that selected-answer questions, such as multiple choice, matching, and true or false, are the quickest way to capture this in-the-moment learning and may be the most effective way to efficiently capture recall or conceptual understanding. However, if we are inviting the summative demonstration of a complex learning goal, we may design a performance task to measure this degree of learning. Attending to the kinds of learning indicated within a learning goal (and within the smaller building blocks that the goal comprises) is an important step in determining how we will assess students. In chapter 2, we will clarify the learning continuum, which can help us with this process.
Clarity affords us the opportunity to have fun, experiment, and engage our learners in authentic processes and products. Our professional understanding allows us to watch and listen to our students and determine where they are on their journeys so we can invite them to explore further, take risks, and celebrate growth.
Changing the Assessment Paradigm
Many educators have come to associate assessment and the standards-based movement with rigid rules and boundaries that can impede learning. As a response, many new education trends have emerged, including Genius Hour, problem-based learning, and flipped learning. These approaches are often positioned in contrast to the traditional paradigm. They are engaging and student focused, and it is no wonder they get much attention. With the current tension in the world of education around standardized assessment, teachers may be left believing they have to choose between a focus on standards or exploratory learning. Teachers may design lessons around learning goals most of the time but try to sneak in inquiry and creativity when they can find the time. This can result in a fractured approach to teaching and learning, where students long to move away from test preparation and learning goals and move into the fun days when they can engage in topics of their own choosing. As teachers, we may feel some choices we face when planning and assessing are stark, and we long to nurture engagement for our learners. Engaging in this type of either-or paradigm can be troubling. Often, however, these paradigms are false dichotomies.
Our beliefs about these false dichotomies can not only impact the decisions we make around assessment and instruction but can also impact the language we use when we speak about learning. In our rush to get things done, prepare for high-stakes tests, and fit in the learning goals we are required to teach, we may be communicating a message about assessment that ultimately affects how students are positioned in relation to learning. Bringing an awareness to the false dichotomies we may perceive and the language choices we may be inadvertently using could help us to make assessment everything it could be and learning everything we hope for.
False Dichotomies Between Achievement and Creativity
The task of making classroom decisions is not without doubt and conflict. We can sometimes feel conflicted between defining a goal ahead of time to ensure we are supporting all students and not being overly prescriptive in classrooms. We want a solid place for creativity and innovation for both ourselves and our students. We want to bring ourselves to the learning space and meet students there so we can co-construct meaningful experiences, discussions, and explorations of interest. However, we also know that learning goals are the reality in our education systems and it would be unrealistic to deny or ignore them—and tragic to fail to invite students to explore the things society has determined are important for them to learn.
However, the reality is we don’t have to choose! Goals in specific areas do not necessarily marginalize creativity (Reeves & Reeves, 2016). Formulaic learning doesn’t have to be the cost of achievement in school. We can honor students’ skills and interests within our explorations of what our system has decided students should learn. Mary Catherine Bateson (1994) states, “When you are able to attend to something new or to see the familiar in a new way, this is a creative act” (p. 10). With creativity and freedom to explore ideas in a multitude of ways and with a willingness to work alongside children, we can actually do both. We can develop our learning goals while engaging in creative acts.
We need to be receptive to the related
