An assessment may cover more than one proficiency scale. If this is the case, the teacher must provide formative scores for each scale represented on the assessment; otherwise, the score is not able to be used formatively.
Planning an assessment system to generate formative scores involves the teacher identifying which topics to assess, when to assess them, and whether a specific assessment will address more than one topic. Although a teacher does not have to identify every assessment to use for each topic for a grading period, it is useful to rough out a general plan. For example, the following chart in figure 1.6 from Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work by Robert J. Marzano (2006) depicts a general plan for assessing six topics (each with its own proficiency scale) over a nine-week period. Xs denote when the teacher will assess a topic. As the class will assess more than one topic most weeks, the teacher might choose to give multiple separate assessments or one that covers numerous topics.
Source: Marzano, 2006.
Figure 1.6: General plan for assessing six measurement topics over nine weeks.
Using Individual Score-Level Assessments
Assessments for formative scores do not always have to cover the whole range of the associated proficiency scale; some can evaluate only one level of a scale (for example, only 2.0 content). Such assessments allow students to progress at their own pace through the levels of the scale.
Since this strategy requires the teacher to use assessments that evaluate only one level of a scale, the teacher should design several assessments during an instructional unit. For example, the teacher could design three assessments to be given over the course of a unit. The first assessment comes near the beginning of the unit and covers only score 2.0 content. For this assessment, the highest score students could receive would be a 2.0 because the assessment only addresses this level of the scale. The second assessment comes later in the unit, after the teacher has covered the target content, and is focused on level 3.0 knowledge. At the end of the unit, the teacher provides an assessment that covers score 4.0 content. Of course, students must first demonstrate competence with a level before being given an assessment at the next level. With this approach, the whole class progresses together. The teacher continues teaching and assessing a level of content until the whole class (or close to it) has mastered that level.
Using Different Types of Assessments
Teachers use different types of assessments to collect formative scores. Each has its time and place in the classroom.
Obtrusive assessments interrupt the normal flow of activity in the classroom. The most common is the traditional pencil-and-paper tests involving true-or-false, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and constructed-response items. However, this category also includes demonstrations, performances, and probing discussions between the teacher and a student.
Unobtrusive assessments do not interrupt the flow of instruction, and students might not even be aware the teacher is assessing them. Such assessments typically involve the teacher observing students, in person or via recording. They are most easily applied to content that is procedural or involves a skill, strategy, or process.
Student-generated tasks are a powerful alternative to the other two categories of assessments—and are the most underutilized in classrooms. Students generate their own tasks to demonstrate competence for specific levels of the scale. This approach is often used when a student receives a score on a teacher-designed assessment and wants to move up to the next score value on a proficiency scale. He then develops an idea for a task to show he has mastered the content of the next level and presents it for teacher approval. Student-generated assessments help develop student agency because they give some decision-making power to those being assessed.
Generating Summative Scores
A summative score indicates a student’s status at the end of a specific interval of time such as a grading period. There are four different approaches to assigning summative scores.
• Approach 1: Each assessment over a specific interval of time allows students to score at the 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 level. The students graph their scores throughout the unit, and the teacher uses that group of scores to assign a summative score at the end of the unit.
• Approach 2: The first assessment within a specific interval of time allows students to score at the 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 level. After the first assessment, students move at their own pace, taking individual score-level assessments to move up to the next level.
• Approach 3: The teacher administers individual score-level assessments to the entire class, only moving up to the next level once the majority of students in the class has mastered the content at the current level.
• Approach 4: The teacher assigns scores at the end of each unit, but students are allowed to improve those scores at any time during the year by demonstrating their competence at higher score levels, usually using student-generated assessments.
For this strategy, teachers can use one or more of these different approaches to generating summative scores for a specific proficiency scale.
Charting Student Progress
Students set goals relative to a specific scale at the beginning of a learning period and track their scores on that scale, using a chart the teacher provides, such as that in figure 1.7.
The teacher can then assign a summative score to the student for the scale at the end of the learning period.
Charting Class Progress
In this strategy, the teacher uses a whole-class tracking chart to get a snapshot of the percentage of students who scored at proficient or above for a particular assessment. See figure 1.8 for an example.
Individual teachers or teams of teachers can use these aggregated data to identify future instructional emphases. If the data indicate that an insufficient percentage of students in a particular grade level are at or above the designated performance standard, then teachers at that grade level might mount a joint effort to enhance student progress for the learning goal.
Source: Marzano, 2010.
Figure 1.7: Student progress chart.
Source: Marzano, 2010.
Figure 1.8: Class progress chart.
Monitoring Element 2
Specific student responses and behaviors allow the teacher to determine whether this element is being implemented effectively and producing the desired effects.
• Students can describe how they have progressed on a particular proficiency scale.
• Students periodically update
