| AAC | COMMUNIQUE |
| Spring 2003 |
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AAC OFFICE
#500, 11010-142 Street IMPORTANT DATES October 23-25, 2003
2002 - 2003 Executive
Robert Hogg, Executive Director
AAC MEMBERS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVE
Alberta Teachers' Association
AAC is a not-for-profit, partnership of basic education organizations. It is dedicated to enhancing student achievement through classroom assessment for learning. AAC is a registered charitable organization with membership consisting of 45 jurisdictions representing more than 80% of the students in Alberta.
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The Blind Educators and the Assessment Creature
As I flew somewhere over the American mid-west en route to ASCD Assessment Consortium meetings in Alexandria, Virginia, I was inspired by the beautifully practical ideas of Thomas Armstrong. His recently published The Multiple Intelligences of Reading and Writing- Making the Words Come Alive (ASCD 2003) has the beginnings of a "learning trilogy." He retells the familiar tale from ancient India, "The Blind Men and the Elephant." He then added a less familiar story of "The Blind Educators and the Literacy Lion" that portrays what he describes as "'The Reading Wars' between combatants advocating a particular approach to teach reading, writing or both to students: phonics, basal readers, whole language, and critical literacy among any number of methods."
I offer the following as the third member of a trilogy (Hogg, 2003)*.
A king presented four blind educators in his village with a powerful, complex and sometimes mysterious beast and asked each to say what it was.
The first educator was sent to touch the creature. Once he had done this he announced, "This creature is all about ranking and sorting. It is made up of accountability assessments with normative data flowing from its head to compare students, schools, districts, provinces/states and even countries. Accountability and selecting talent is its mission."
The second educator took her turn to examine the beast. She returned to the king exclaiming, "This beast is truly made up of assessment OF student learning to account to others outside of the classroom and school. However, it is also made up of criterion-referenced assessments because they are the most fair and useful. The creature's mission is to provide information on whether students are achieving the standards."
The third educator was then sent to touch the creature. He said, "Though I too agree that assessments OF student learning and their data flow from the beast, they certainly are attention getting! But there is so much more. The creature is made up of a variety of assessments FOR student learning that engage students, are vitally linked with the learning, inform teachers and encourage further learning. Its mission is assessment FOR learning that improves motivation, increases student achievement, raises standards and improves test scores of learning."
Finally, a fourth educator was sent, and she came back saying, "The others are all shortsighted! There is more to this creature than performance-enhancing and accountability assessments. This beast is made up of entire learning experiences that students carry out for freedom, empowerment and the love of learning. It's about helping them know what they know and can do. It's made up of carefully planned curriculum designs with high quality assessment at provincial/state, district, school, and classroom levels. This means that at each of these levels there is supportive policy and well thought out assessment plans. Its message and mission is to use assessment to help all students succeed and become lifelong learners. We will know it is working when the assessments that are in place are ones that students do not want to miss!
And with this final assessment, the educators proceeded to dispute heatedly among themselves about who was really right.
It is time to end these literacy and assessment wars. Each creature is powerful, complex and mysterious. Each description that we receive of them - from educators, psychologists, brain researchers, and other professionals - can only enrich our knowledge of what these powerful beings are really made, and why we want so much for our students to have contact with them. (paragraph adapted from Armstrong 2003, p.11) Robert Hogg
The pre-conference Leadership Day on Thursday October 23 at the Coast Plaza Hotel will feature Dr. Guskey. The focus will be on how to foster quality staff and professional development for teachers in the interest of improving student performance and achievement through classroom assessment.
Once again this year's conference will feature a diversity of sessions including in-depth workshops. In addition to breakout sessions, delegates can choose to attend one of three half-day workshops on Saturday morning.
Registration details for both the pre-conference Leadership Day and the conference are being sent to schools through AAC jurisdiction representatives. To register use the conference Program Guide (brochure) or go to the AAC web site for on-line registration. Register early to avoid disappointment!
Curriculum Embedded Performance Assessment
With considerable classroom time taken for assessment it is important to not just sample learning with assessments, but to create higher level assessments that move students to greater achievement.
Recent research examines whether students enrolled in classrooms using curriculum-embedded performance assessment show greater gains on large scale standardized tests than students without exposure to such performance assessments. One example of a curriculum-embedded performance assessment is a Work Sampling System (WSS).
Designed for students from preschool through grade 5, WSS is comprised of:
Teachers' perceptions of their students in classroom situations are used as the data of assessment. Students and parents are involved in the learning and assessment process. What children are learning and how teachers are teaching is documented.
Using this approach, teachers learn about the students' processes of learning by observing
and recording interactions with learning materials, adults, and peers in the classroom.
Teachers then use these data to evaluate the children's achievements and plan for future educational interventions, through comparisons with standards-based guidelines.
The results indicate that:
Educators conclude that:
For further information, see http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n9/
Assessment Mini-Glossary
AAC continues to encourage the use of a shared assessment vocabulary. Here is a mini-glossary derived from AAC professional resources and from a soon to be published professional development resource produced in partnership with the Edmonton Regional Consortium - Using Assessment FOR Learning: Strategies that Improve Student Achievement.
Assessment is an inference making process based on sampling… it is more like a photo album than a snap shot.
The 4-phase study will:
An area for further discussion identified in the report focuses on the assessment of "softer, more elusive skills"-"Teachers and others indicated that it is more problematic to assess the softer, more elusive skills, such as the ability to work as part of a team, communication/presentation skills and creative expression." p 45. (See Appendix F for information about creative factors and creative strengths- pp. 32-35) Current research identifies student creativity and imaginative thinking as the "next curriculum issue."
Excerpt from Data Based Edutrends, Issue 12.09, May 12, 2003
Increasing evidence shows that a "creative class" contributes in a significant way to the economic well being of many cities. Lack of a creative class appears to cause some cities to have lower economic results.
Schools face increased expectations that they will develop students who "create meaningful new forms." This way of thinking is diversified among many professions, including scientists, engineers, university professors, poets, novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, architects, nonfiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts, and other opinion-makers.
Curriculum designers stressing imaginative thinking focus on producing new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful, such as:
The most effective school programs have students engage in creative problem-solving, drawing on larger bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Teachers strive to have students:
The skill set of the future will include increased imaginative thinking and creativity.
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