CTAP4 Data Assessment

Online testing will require skills beyond those finely honed copying, collating and stapling skills we have acquired from our years of paper-and-pencil testing. Selecting the online assessment tool that works best for your school district can be facilitated by ensuring communication among all potential users of the application from the beginning of the selection process.

While online testing shares many of the same preparation requirements as traditional paper-based tests, they now take different forms. Rather than making sure you have enough printed copies of a test, an evaluation of the viability of online testing should involve a review of a district’s ability to provide for sufficient online access within the schedule for administration. For example, based on the number of computers and the network load, how many students can take the assessment during an exam period? Does the software restrict the number of concurrent users? Teachers likely will want the ability to create multiple forms of the test for security within the test administration. Can the application easily provide for this function?  

Further, the use of computers for online testing necessitates that students and teachers are already comfortable with using this technology as a regular part of daily instruction. Focused professional development on the usage of the application as well as what to do if things go awry will help the transition for staff. Issues to address could include what to do if a student needs to change an answer after a section of the testing is complete, how are unique log-ins provided for the students or if there is a technical problem during an administration can students resume where they were in the test.

Many professional development efforts are organized as a smorgasbord of courses offered to educators. The district measures the effort's effectiveness by how many courses staff complete or how satisfied teachers are with the classes offered. District leaders who use the smorgasbord approach may view professional development as an extra that potentially helps an individual's performance but is not absolutely essential. They probably invest little in professional development planning because they don't expect great results.

Other district leaders recognize how much professional learning contributes to the district's learning goals for students, and so they align individual, team, school, and system learning plans. At each level, participants consider what outcomes they want for students, the knowledge and skills teachers need, and the professional learning that will help staff achieve the system goals. To be results-driven means following Stephen Covey's advice (1989): "Begin with the end in mind." Once student outcomes are selected, professional development leaders identify the knowledge and skills adults need to help students achieve the district's standards of success. The knowledge and skills linked to the student learning goals become part of the comprehensive professional development curriculum

In too many schools, staff development is limited to teachers attending workshops, courses, and conferences. School districts can no longer afford staff development efforts that are predominately "adult pull-out programs." That kind of learning alone will not produce high-level results. Schools will achieve high levels of performance when professional learning is embedded in every school day.

Schools in our country hear that data makes the difference in improving student achievement. Not all schools, however, have felt the positive impact from what they believe is data-driven decision making. The most common reason: Most school districts in this country believe they are being data-driven when they have analyzed the dickens out of their state assessment results.

But the good news came paired with bad as state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell declared that the education of African American students has reached a crisis stage. Scores of that group remained well below those of white and Asian American students, he said, while black students' English skills generally match those of Latino students - many of whom are just learning the language.

The scenarios that illustrate each chapter come from two case studies, one based on a K-8th grade scenario and the other a 9th-12th grade setting. Data Wise grounds its discussion in examples from those contexts, keeping the material accessible and focused on realistic problems and solutions. Data Wise's process depends on collaboration and full faculty participation. With a sympathetic understanding of the inevitable limits on staff time, the authors discuss the best ways to structure collaborative faculty time and include three protocols to involve faculty and staff in gaining insight from data.

A school that is also a professional learning community recognizes that work with students and adults is on-going and embodies the values of continual growth, risk-taking and trust.

Now that we had a structure around which to build our professional community, we could explore what that community could do. We found that it allowed us to do several distinct things: as well as developing a shared accountability system, we could diagnose our students’ weaknesses, as well as the gaps in our own teaching; we learned to critique one another’s practice; and we found ways to get to know our students beyond the classroom.

As we scored student work together, and team-taught in writing seminar, we also identified skills that we needed to further develop as teachers.

Both formative assessment and assessment for learning are intended to provide information early enough in the decision-making process to influence student learning. As traditionally conceived, formative assessment helps teachers group students more effectively and select appropriate instructional interventions. The teacher uses the assessment information. However, the litmus test of an effective assessment for learning is that it informs students about their own learning, helping them focus their learning energies where they are likely to be most effective. So formative assessment enlightens the teacher, while assessment for learning enlightens the student

A Way of Thinking in a Professional Learning Community: Four Principles Begin with Building a Guiding Coalition

Researcher Ken Futernick (2007), after surveying 2,000 current and former teachers in California,concluded that teachers felt greater personal satisfaction when they believed in their own efficacy, were involved in decision making, and established strong collegial relationships.

School leaders who foster collaboration among novice and veteran teachers can improve teacher retention and teacher satisfaction, according to studies conducted by Susan Kardos and Susan Moore Johnson.

n Tennessee, school performance coaches receive specialized training to facilitate improvements in low-performing schools and districts. Helping teachers collaborate in meaningful ways is part of the work.