#500, 11010-142 Street
Edmonton, AB T5N 2R1
Phone: (780) 447-9420
Fax: (780) 447-2531
E-Mail: aac@compusmart.ab.ca
Web site: www.aac.ab.ca

IMPORTANT DATES

October 24 to 26, 2002
8th Annual Fall Conference
Assessment: Bridging the Gap
Fantasyland Hotel, Edmonton

2001 - 2002 Executive
Darlene Montgomery, Chair
Jacqueline Skytt, Sec. Treasurer
Danny Kinal
Ann Mulgrew
Cully Poston
Tom Sperling

Robert Hogg, Executive Director
Diane Toomey, Executive Assistant

AAC MEMBERS AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVE

Alberta Teachers' Association
- Jacqueline Skytt
Aspen View Reg. Division. No. 19
- Brian Bittorf
Battle River Reg. Division No. 31
- Stephen Smith
Calgary Roman Catholic Separate School District No. 1
- Manny Ferreirinha
Calgary School District No. 19
- Darlene Montgomery
Canadian Rockies Reg. Division No. 12
- Brian Callaghan
Chinook's Edge School Division No. 73
- Jim Barritt
East Central Catholic SSRD No. 16
- Valerie Burghardt
Edmonton Catholic School District No. 7
- Monique Gibeau
Edmonton School District No.7
- Anne Mulgrew
Elk Island Public School Reg. Div. No. 14
- Christine Romanko
Evergreen Catholic Separate Reg. Division No. 2
- Larry Hlushak
Fort McMurray School District No. 2833
- Ken Saunderson
Fort Vermillion School District No. 52
- Freddi Bromling
Golden Hills Reg. Div. No. 15
- Ed Holt
Grande Prairie School District No. 2357
- Wes Brooks
Grande Yellowhead School Div. No. 35
- Judy Grigat
Greater St. Albert Catholic Reg. Div. No. 29
- Maureen Pawliuk
High Prairie School Division No. 48
- Rene St. Andre
Holy Spirit R.C.S. Reg. Division No. 4
- Cully Poston
Lethbridge School District No. 51
- Paul Stevenson
Living Waters Catholic Reg. Division No. 42
- Carol Lemay
Livingstone Range School Division No. 68
- Ken Lorenz
Medicine Hat Public School District No. 76
- Joanne Stickle
Northern Gateway Reg. Division No. 10
- Terry Sunderland
Northern Lights School Division No. 69
- Roger Nippard
Northland School Division No. 61
- Karen Penney
Palliser Reg. Division No. 26
- John Darroch
Parkland School Division No. 70
- Harry Wagner
Peace River School Division No. 10
- Robin Webster
Peace Wapiti School Board No. 33
- Paul Cincurak
Red Deer Catholic Reg. Div. No. 39
- Chris Andrew
Rocky View School Division No. 41
- Mel Sly
St. Albert Protestant School District No. 6
- Lois Gluck
St. Paul Education Regional Div. No. 1
- Lorraine Tchir
St. Thomas Aquinas R.C.S. Reg. Div. No. 38
- Metro Hucaluk
Sturgeon School Division No. 24
- Darryl Reimche
Wetaskiwin Reg. Division No. 11
- Randy Risto
Wild Rose School Division No. 66
- Tom Sperling
Yellowknife Education District No. 1
- Claudia Parker

What is AAC?

AAC is a not-for-profit, partnership of basic education organizations. It is dedicated to enhancing student learning through classroom assessment that increases student confidence as learners and enables them to reveal what they know and demonstrate what they can do. AAC is a registered charitable organization with membership consisting of 40 jurisdictions representing approximately 80% of the students in Alberta.

What's Our Purpose?

It is essential to recognize and use assessment strategies and tools that actually foster learning for all students. AAC's commitment is to develop high quality, authentic classroom assessments while providing professional development experiences for teachers.

About Standardized Testing
As reported in the Canadian publication, Preparing for the Future, Data Based Edutrends, standardized tests, in their current form, generally fail to support the primary aim of assessment. Some unusual opponents of standardized testing have emerged (see also, the book review of The Truth About Testing by W. James Popham in this issue).

The President of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Bruce M. Alberts, argues that these tests lead to:

• a focus on memory and word association which are poor judges of a student's ability
• a concentration on preparing students to be good test takers, but not good thinkers
• students uninterested in studying science and lacking the most basic science skills
• the closing of doors to the study of science by many students who are excellent students - often female - but are turned off by this form of testing, and
• usage of functions beyond the limits of their original crude selection purpose.

Research conducted by Wendy Williams and Robert Sternberg of Cornell and Yale Universities compared student scores with their later accomplishments. They have concluded that:

• with one small exception, there is no link between scores and later accomplishments
• the only link of scores with accomplishments is a slight correlation with male first year (university) grades.

There is a campaign for major changes in assessment practices in public schools, colleges and universities. Look for:

• reformatting multiple choice tests to include open ended student responses to questions,
• increased student hands-on demonstrations
• large scale tests with fewer questions . . . a higher percentage requiring interpretation skills and less memorization of information.

About Authentic Assessment
According to researchers at Bowling Green State University, authentic assessment involves students in tasks that are derived from and simulate "real life" (or authentic) conditions or situations. The aim of performance-based or authentic assessment is to provide valid and accurate information about what students really know and are able to do, or about the quality of educational programs. The collective assessments do not reduce or distort the nature of knowledge or the nature of learning in the information gathering process. Assessing how well knowledge and skills have been learned means requiring their use in a meaningful real-life context (http://www.bgsu.edu/organizations/ctl/aa.html)

Be assured that the Alberta Assessment Consortium will continue to advocate student assessment practices that "foster learning of worthwhile academic content for all students".

Robert Hogg

New Members
AAC is pleased to announce three new members - Peace Wapiti School Board No. 33, St. Paul Education Regional Division No. 1 and Yellowknife Catholic Schools. We look forward to working with you and serving your assessment needs in the coming years. Our membership now stands at 40!

2002 Fall Conference - October 24th to 26th - Edmonton
This year's conference theme is "Assessment: Bridging the Gap". The conference will be held at The Fantasyland Hotel in Edmonton featuring keynotes Rick Stiggins (teacher, author of numerous books and articles on classroom assessment, and founder of the Assessment Training Institute, Portland,) and Anne Davies (teacher, Canadian author of resources in effective teaching and assessment practices, consultant, and university speaker).

NEW for 2002! A pre-conference Leadership Day focused on "building assessment capacity in schools and districts" for lead teachers, administrators, curriculum and assessment personnel will be held on Thursday, October 24. Details about this pre-registered workshop facilitated by Anne Davies will be posted announced on the AAC web site soon. 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 will be sent to schools through jurisdiction representatives in May. To register use the conference Program Guide (brochure) or go to the AAC web site for on-line registration. Register early to avoid disappointment!

This conference offers learning and assessment insights featuring practical sessions offered by outstanding teachers.

Call for Presenters

Special Thanks to 2001 Fall Conference Sponsors

Xerox Canada Ltd. Jostens Canada Pepsi Cola Canada Beverages Pearson Education Canada Gage Publishers The Westin, Calgary Office Depot Edmonton Catholic Reg. Div. Sturgeon School Div. Fort Vermilion School Div. Northland School Div. St. Albert Protestant Board of Education Golden Hills Reg. Div.

Fantasyland Hotel, Edmonton IKON Office Solutions Alberta Teachers' Association Nelson Thomson Learning Harcourt Canada The Impress Corporation Battle River Reg. Div. Wild Rose School Div. East Central Catholic SSRD Chinook's Edge School Div. Parkland School Div. Greater St. Albert Catholic Reg. Div. Morgex

Summer Development Workshop 2002

Each summer AAC brings together large numbers of teachers from our member jurisdictions to learn about classroom assessment and develop materials for use by all members. This year's four and a half day development workshop will be held Monday, July 29 to Friday, August 2 at W.P. Wagner High School in Edmonton.

Workshop activities will include:

• a half day workshop on Monday afternoon on how to design authentic performance assessments and rubrics. This will set the direction and standard for developmental work during the week Participants should be familiar with the contents of the AAC resource, How to Develop and Use Performance Assessments in the Classroom.
• projects* to
  • develop performance assessments for new secondary programs (both English and French) including Science, Mathematics and Language Arts
  • develop performance assessments for division 2 elementary programs (both English and French) including Language Arts, Mathematics, Fine Arts and Science
  • review and revise AAC assessment materials for elementary Science
  • compose a new AAC professional resource on how and why to conduct formative assessments in the classroom (protocols for looking at student work, strategies for valid and reliable student self-assessment and how to provide meaningful feedback to students to help them in continuing to grow) Nominations from jurisdiction representatives will be invited for this project during March - writers will begin their research and writing as a team in the spring)
  * subject area projects will proceed based on sufficient numbers of both experienced and novice performance assessment developers. Assessment tasks will be ready for field-testing and collecting samples of student work during 2002-2003 (see the RFT incentive program)

Interested teachers are invited to complete the Call for Participants Application and submit it before Friday, May 3. Go to the AAC web site for more details and to complete and submit an application. Applications will be accepted from AAC member jurisdiction teachers. If you are invited to be a participant, you will notified by May 17.

Request for Tools (RFT)

Teachers will receive a non-taxable benefit for

• creating and submitting a performance assessment using the tools provided on the AAC web site. A professional development voucher of $300 will be awarded for each approved performance assessment.
• reviewing and refining performance assessments developed by other teachers prior to the field testing. A voucher of $75 will be awarded.
• field testing a performance assessment that have already been developed, collecting and submitting samples of student work to AAC (with appropriate copyright clearance) in each of the four levels performance, and making suggestions for further enhancement of the performance assessment. A $125 professional development voucher will be awarded.

Details are found here Request for Tools (RFT)

BOOK REVIEW

W. James in Assessment Land is the somewhat whimsical title Popham preferred for his book, but don't let that deceive you. This is a down to earth, very readable challenge to absurd high stakes testing practices in the United States specifically, but with relevance to assessment practices in Canada. He claims no illusions that reading the book will transform the reader into a measurement maven en route to composing instructionally beneficial assessments… that, he says would take a second reading!

Popham challenges the notion that high-stakes testing programs are the best way to improve education. In fact such tests tend to diminish curricular attention toward any subject that isn't included in the high-stakes testing program. "As many beleaguered educators will comment, 'If our chief job is to raise test scores, why waste time teaching content that's not even tested?'"

Lest we think that Alberta doesn't have high-stakes large scale assessments, consider the two main conditions Popham suggests must exist before a test can qualify as 'high-stakes'… one or both conditions must apply:

• There are significant consequences linked to individual students' test performance.
• The student test scores determine the "instructional success" of a school or district.

Popham wants readers to first understand misuses of today's high-stakes tests and be able to explain the misuses and why they occur to others… policymakers don't establish high-stakes tests to harm students or to 'get' teachers, they simply don't know that they don't know. Similarly, in classroom assessment teachers may not know that they don't know… this is an assessment literacy problem that needs to be overcome. The call to action is a call for a more assessment literate society. "…the educational community is woefully ignorant about measurement. This assessment illiteracy has induced many of us to watch, not act, as unsound high-stakes testing programs … continue their insidious spread."

Secondly, he wants readers to "recognize the distinguishing features of instructionally illuminating assessments and be able to differentiate between tests that are and are not instructionally illuminating." Large-scale tests and classroom assessments can be instructionally illuminating if four rules are satisfied (i.e. classroom assessment rules… large-scale rules are similar and according to Popham, are "quite relevant to a teacher's creation of classroom assessments"):

1. Use only a few major (summative) assessments, but make sure they measure "learner outcomes of indisputable importance" (In contrast, Popham refers to early types of large scale assessments as "most minimum imaginable competency tests")
2. "Use diverse types of classroom assessments to clarify the nature of any learning outcome you seek."
3. "Make student responses to classroom assessments central to your instructional decision making." This has important implications for both formative and summative assessments… everything that is assessed doesn't need to be reported as a grade.
4. "Regularly assess educationally significant affect-but only to make inferences about groups of students, not individual students." Popham's concept of 'inferences' is most interesting. He says that technically, it isn't the test that is valid or invalid, it is the inference made about a student made based on the student's performance.

Test developers who "think instructionally" need to build large-scale tests (and classroom assessments) that "measure only the most important student outcomes that can be successfully taught within the time available for teaching and accurately assessed within the time available for testing." The simple truth, as Popham calls it, is that everything it is impossible to assess properly all the good things we want kids to learn.

W. James in Assessment Land composed by an insightful, if not reformed, psychometrician is a must read for teachers and high-stakes test developers seeking to create instructionally illuminating tests. I can hardly wait to read the book a second time!

Robert Hogg