What Gets Measured Gets Done

Do you find the topic of assessments befuddling at times? I certainly do.  But I’ve dedicated myself to increasing my assessment literacy.  I’m making headway — in understanding all the issues involved in the different types of assessment, as well as developing an understanding what a system of assessments looks like in a competency-based world.  I’d love any recommendations for the very best resources on assessment (please leave recommendations in comments) as I’m starting to update the wiki page.  In the meantime here are three resources:

1)    The upcoming webinar on Creating a System of Assessments will feature two of the schools from Making Mastery Work – Casco Bay High School and Vergennes Unified.  We will be hearing how each school took a different approach to building out their capacity. You can register here.

2)    The Quality Performance Assessment Initiative at Center for Collaborative Education has a lot of helpful information. I’m reading their new guide right now, and it is helping me understand with greater depth why performance assessment is so important.  I’m realizing that it is just as important for teachers as student so that they can build the deeper teaching skills needed for deeper learning.

3)    In Paul Leather’s presentation to the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents last year, slide 30 shows how NH is thinking about a balanced system to assess student mastery along learning progressions. It made a lot of sense to me and helped me understand how the pieces fit together. (by the way, this presentation has a ton of useful slides).

You can find the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Proficiency-based Learning Task Force report here.