No Child Left Behind and related state reforms have increased recognition of the need for school leaders to use assessment data to drive curriculum and instruction. Initially, assessments were primarily summative in nature, coming at the end of a course or school year. But as school staff began looking at this information, many began seeking formative, rather than summative, assessments to gain more frequent feedback on students’ learning (a distinction described as being a choice between “biopsy” data that is still actionable and “autopsy” data that is collected after the fact). As a result, demand for formative assessments has skyrocketed, and schools are deploying a variety of models, ranging from “home-grown” tests created by teachers themselves to commercially packaged assessment systems costing $12 or more per student.
Formative assessments are a fast-growing and under-studied phenomenon, with major implications for leadership practice. They offer the potential to close the “virtuous circle” of curriculum, instruction, and assessment by providing “just-in-time” feedback for teachers and administrators. They also raise major issues of cost, validity, individual capacity, and organizational coherence.
I am currently in the midst of a study of three school districts. Each has employed a formative assessment system in their middle schools. Each has begun with math and will ramp to English in the near future. Each district is utilizing a different assessment system: Galileo (ATI), NWEA, and one district which has created their own system. We are finding that there are a number of issues that foster or inhibit the use of formative data:
• Being able to understand the difference between formative and summative data;
• Direct match between the assessment items, state curricular frameworks, and what is taught by the teacher;
• Timely, accessible, and friendly data reports;
• Legitimate time for groups of teachers to meet about the data;
• Willingness to engage in discussion about the impact data should have on programs and pedagogy;
• Teachers’ capacity to implement new pedagogical strategies based on the data (e.g. differentiated instruction);
• Organization’s capacity to implement new programmatic strategies based on the data (e.g. course remediation); and,
• Gaining knowledge that student achievement data are more powerful when analyzed with other data sources (e.g. perceptional data).
A recent critique by the Aspen Institute names the use of formative assessment data as a key recommendation for the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) - currently under the auspices of No Child Left Behind. With the tremendous pressure for districts to improve state test scores, important new questions have emerged. In what ways have data influenced decision-making in schools? Are educators participating in shaping data to change their practice or is their practice shaping the data? Are educators using data that are valid, aligned with state curricular benchmarks, and associated with state level summative assessments? And, will the coercive, exogenous pressures, and mandates have a simple axiomatic impact on administrative decision-making and pedagogical practices? These are current questions I am interested in learning more about as a new debate of ESEA is looming. During the last debate, K through post secondary educators were woefully underrepresented in this debate. This time around how data are used to support not just sanction schools will once again be of paramount importance. So too will the ways in which we all engage in the debate.
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