Quick Feedback for Teacher Assessments

Working with teachers on assessment is one of the best ways to improve curriculum and instruction practices. Teacher assessment provides a reflective space where there are no political or philosophical arguments - just student data that results from a teacher's design and decision making. This provides a great space to talk to teachers about how they understand what the curriculum is, their approaches to teaching, and the results that they get as a direct result of the relationship between curriculum and instruction. Furthermore, if a teacher has really been paying attention to his or her own assessment practices, it makes data analysis of external assessments more personal and valuable as a source of information.

Reviewing assessments can assist you as the principal with really understanding curriculum and instruction implementation in your school. Of course, you don't want to spend enormous amounts of time going through each individual question, but there are some quick points that can be valuable to both you and the teacher.

1. Is the time assigned to the test/task reasonable? Many teachers make the mistake of trying to test fluency (how automatic a skill is) before they test mastery. This happens when you try to test a large amount of items in a short time or require a complex task to be completed in a short amount of time.

I tell teachers to use the time and a half rule. If it would take you as an expert an hour to do this test/task, then expect for it to take students at least 1 1/2 times amount of time. For instance, a teacher has a 45 minute class period, but they have 30 questions attached to two reading passages and 2 short answer questions. If a student were to finish this test, this would mean that either the questions are very low level or the students are very fast, expert readers who have already mastered the skills in the exam. Neither situation is ideal for assessment and demonstrates that the assessment probably is not going to be worth the class time being used.

I encourage teachers to use less items that are higher quality and have different levels of complexity. They get better information about student performance this way. The purpose of assessment is not to fill up the class period; it is to find out if students have mastered the skills and content taught.

TIP: Make this the first thing that you look at. The size of the task v. the time given will probably help you to develop some very pointed questions that will help you to zero in on feedback for the specific teacher.

2. Does the question/prompt reflect the standards? I encourage teachers to explicitly write the standard/objectives on their assessment. This serves three purposes: one, it helps the teacher to focus on making sure that (s)he is aligning the assessment item to the standard; two, it helps the student know what is being evaluated during the assessment (really important in complex tasks like projects or essays); and, three, it serves as valuable information in data analysis later on. As the administrator, you can also use it to understand how standards are being implemented in your school.

If the standard says to explain but the assessment has the student selecting an answer or giving an opinion, this is not aligned. The result will be that the assessment item isn't that valuable for understanding the effectiveness of instruction or if students are learning.

TIP: Review the teacher's unit/lesson plan before you look at the assessment to make sure you know the standards/objectives and then check to see if the items match

3. Is the assessment organized by standard/objective and then by difficulty level? Assessments that are measuring student performance should be organized first by the standard/objective; within that, the assessment should be organized from the easiest skill/task to the most difficult.

This allows the student to progress through levels of mastery, keeping their attention focused on a specific objective rather than having to sporadically change gears throughout the test (which adds a cognitive skill outside of what is being tested). It also allows the teacher to see the depth of mastery very quickly (hmm, most students score low at the 3rd level of this objective....).

If the teacher is using multiple anchors (reading passages, graphs, etc.) and testing multiple objectives, they should have almost like a protocol for each assessment item, going from easiest to most difficult testing the same skills.

TIP: This is something that you can see fairly quickly and if you use something like Bloom's or Costa's, then you can easily give feedback on the organization and difficulty levels.

Of course, this isn't everything to look for in an assessment, but it is a good start, and will be a strong conversation starter with your teachers. Some have never thought about these issues and others don't know where to start. But, in my experience, the more teachers understand about the assessments they create, the better they get at data analysis and responding to student data. Furthermore, the data begins to have an intrinsic value to the teachers rather than the stench of compliance.

How Do You Define Struggling?

It is now en vogue to use the word "struggling" - it is, in fact, the nice way to say if someone is in need of intervention or has a number of "growth opportunities".  The issue with this is that struggling is not necessarily a bad thing - most of us struggle before we have breakthroughs.  But, how do we define the difference between those who are in the natural progression of learning versus those who need intervention?

I have been grappling with this concept over the past year as I look at and process where my school goes next, but the one thing that persistently comes up in this internal conversation is the fact that everyone can't be struggling.  Everyone can't be in need of intervention.  And, everyone cannot be at the remedial level.

This particular thought is very important because I think that it will define who I am as an administrator as well as the identify of our school.  What are the specific criteria for struggling or in need of intervention versus the need for support and encouragement?  These are two very different strategies, and, to get results, they have to be applied judiciously.

Has it been taught?  In education, I find that we make a lot of assumption about both adults and students.  Is it really fair to label someone as struggling when they actually haven't been taught?  I'm sure that I would be a struggling neurosurgeon having taken no medical courses or having spent any time in an operating room, but in this case would struggling be the right classification?  I love the teaching profession.  I believe that teachers and instruction make a difference.  Part of truly believing in the power of education is believing that instruction occurs before intervention or remediation.

This happens to students when schools and teachers assume that they should just know how to read, how to write, how to do math, etc. when in fact a large group of them do not and have never had the instruction to know it.  We act surprised when students fail to excel on exams when we have no evidence that the curriculum or instruction ever addressed the material.  The students are then blamed for not knowing something that they have never been taught.

This happens to teachers when schools and administrators assume that teachers should be able to implement every best practice and have data analysis skills without any reflection on when teachers became certified or what their schools of education focused on, or, even closer to home, the type of professional development that teachers have had access to.  The teachers are then blamed for not knowing something that they have not been taught.  I don't say this to mean that teachers should not continually seek professional development, but to point out that if you change the expectations for teaching, then you should expect for there to be gaps in teacher knowledge and practice.

The struggling/intervention label should not be used for people who have not actually received instruction in the skills that they are being critiqued on.

What is the mindset?  An administrator shared a great way that she learned about her staff - she said she started every conversation trying to figure out if teachers "can't" or "won't".  This definitely speaks to making sure that people have had access to instruction, but it also points to another important issue - mindset.

Can we define people as "struggling" if they are not putting forth effort?  It seems that this drains resources and energy rather than solving the issue of performance.  When we encounter students who "don't/won't do school", are we pouring money and time into academic interventions that most likely will have little impact unless the mindset is changed?  Are we doing the same with teachers or other staff members in our building who have already made up their minds about what they are or are not going to do?

The struggling/intervention label should not be used for people who we need to have difficult conversations with (and, I do believe that students and their parents can fall into this category as well - everyone is responsible for learning).

What are the resources?  I'm always hesitant to believe everyone is struggling unless I see concrete proof.  The biggest reason is that it is my job, as the administrator, to make sure that the resources that we have are appropriately distributed and targeted to help everyone in my building (child and adults) reach their maximum potential.

If everyone is struggling, then there are only two real options - one, redirect most of your resources to intervention (and some will have to be here regardless of what your data is) or rethink how you work and approach the issue, which means that you have to look at how you allocate resources to: one, ensure initial instruction and programming is effective for the majority of your stakeholders; two, allocate resources to those who need additional instruction and support; and, three, allocate time and resources to foster the environment to have the difficult conversations that will move the organization forward.

This seems to be the real theory between Response to Intervention systems rather than the everyone needs some type of intervention approach that seems to be popular in some schools and places across the country.

I am o.k. with people struggling - this is a natural state for everyone.  I struggle everyday, and I'm sure that I'm not alone.  But, the question is, do we need intervention or do we need a different approach?  And, that is something that everyone in education needs to look very closely at.