How the Common Core is Changing Assessments (12:19)
Sandy Fivecoat: Hello my name is Sandy Fivecoat and I will be your host. In this video we will be discussing the new common core curriculum and how to prepare for the new assessments that will accompany it. We will also talk about some techniques and some tips for evaluating student data that we hope will save you time and actually make your teaching more effective. We are excited today in this discussion to be joined by George Rislov. George is a former chief curriculum architect and a senior marketing manager for Compass Learning. Thanks for joining us today George.
George Rislov: My pleasure.
Sandy Fivecoat: Let’s jump right in. This is really exciting content and we’re really glad to get to the meat of this discussion. As we all know assessing the new curriculum is really where the rubber meets the road. I know there are two co-operatives efforts going on: both the PARCC and the Smarter Balanced participation. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between common core and assessment?
George Rislov: Sure. Before I attempt to answer that I’ll issue a copy apart from the sample items and task prototypes that were released last month by PARCC. We haven’t really seen any of the assessments yet so a lot of what I’ll say is speculation based on what we think we do know and some current best practices involving assessment in general. We do know a good bit about the common core state standards. We know that one of the goals of the common core of state standards is for students to think more deeply than what was previously expected. The common core state standards require a greater focus on higher order thinking and higher order questions and skills. For example in math, rather than asking which numbers are even, students will be asked which numbers are even and how do they know that? In English Language Arts the standards are now explicitly taught to history, social studies, science and technical fields. That means that all those content areas will require complex thinking analysis as opposed to remote memorization. With the change in standards, how we assess students for those large scale end of year tests that currently measure adequate yearly progress is also undergoing big changes. With that said I think it’s important to remember that PARCC and Smarter Balanced as well as the other common core assessments for special populations are still summative assessments and that’s good because states have struggled to develop good summative assessments. PARCC and Smarter Balanced should provide better and more consistent information for program improvement and accountability purposes. But summative tests are not going to provide in depth reliable and valid instructionallyactionable data because that’s still the job of the teacher. Now in terms of computer based assessment, advances in technology together with innovative assessment task design and advanced psychometric economistic bottles are going to make it possible for us to obtain a richer and more intelligent nuance picture of what students know and can do than ever before. I think PARCC and Smarter Balanced will be pioneering new formats as well. They say they are so that bears watching as we see how well some of the new formats work. A quick example from PARCC is the use of technology to capture student comprehension of texts in authentic ways that in the past have been difficult to score by a machine for large scale assessments. For example drag and drop, cut and paste, shading of text and moving items to show relationships just to name a few. As I mentioned PARCC has released some of these sample items and task prototypes in the last month and we’re expected to have a release and a pilot test from Smarter Balanced in early 2013. To look on the practical side, once the common core of state standards and assessmentsare in place, a number of nagging problems will be mitigated. The most important one of those is the district standards across states. There is strong evidence of significant differences and academic expectations set by states. In fact that’s one of the whole reasons we have common core state standards. It makes accountability and measurement across state lines difficult and it also makes the problem with student mobility a really difficult one to deal with. Once we have common standards we’ll be able to meet the needs of our highly mobile student population as well.
Sandy Fivecoat: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s a really great summary and it’s exciting to be an educator at a time when not only is the curriculum undergoing a huge shift but that’s driving much needed changes in thinking in assessment as well. Now I know the uniform assessments are not really going to roll out until 2014-2015 school year. Do you have ideas about how teachers can begin to prepare their students now?
George Rislov: There certainly are. Teachers and administrators in all of the common core states are trying to get ahead of the instructional changes of the common core state standards that are going to require for students to be successful. In brief here are four quick ideas for what teachers and administrators can do right now. First, everyone needs to read the common core standards closely and carefully and try to compare them to the standards that their states have adopted and which have previously driven instruction. The more familiar teachers become with both the similarities and the differences, the more comfortable they’ll be with the new standards. For example in English Language Arts a thorough review of the type of texts currently being read by students at various grades should be conducted. Adjustments to the types of texts read may be needed given the emphasis in common core on text complexity and non-fiction and informational text. In math what I think is needed are structured experiences over time in which cross grade, cross course, within grade and within course teams of teachers will analyze the common core development of particular content in cross grades. I think the first step in this particularly with regard to math is that the common core standards do differ significantly from previous state standards. Finally, I think administrators can provide job-embedded professional development to help teachers develop the new skills that they are going to be called for by the common core state standards and the new assessments and that includes time for collaboration. An example would be that you would bring into the English Language Arts discussion social studies and science professionals. It can be called onto by the quality and relevance of the informational non-fiction texts required in the literacy standards for those areas.
Sandy Fivecoat: That’s awesome. This kind of delay in the availability of assessments really is a kind of a blessing in disguise because it gives schools, teachers and administrators, etc. some time to think more carefully about how to draw those connections. It gives some time to do that as opposed to an immediate shift in assessment as well as curriculum.
George Rislov: Yes it should be looked at as an opportunity.
Sandy Fivecoat: That’s right, awesome. Very good point. Now let’s talk about data. We talk a lot about in education that everything needs to be data driven and teachers are unfortunatelyoften swimming in data but not always data they can use. How do you see teachers thinking about approaching the testing data now or later, as a way to help them prepare for the shift both in curriculum and assessment? Do you have ideas for helping teachers think about how to evaluate data in ways that may be more meaningful to their actual teaching practice?
George Rislov: Of course. I think we all know that the education system is currently is configured needs accountability data but what teachers need is instructionallyactionable data. No single assessment can necessarily provide both the accountability data in something that will change instruction. For teachers I think the four main purposes of the data are:
1.To monitor student improvement and learning during the school year.
2.To understand where and how learning is happening.
3.To guide differentiated instruction.
4.To predict performance on the summative assessments.
So summative data is not going to be enough to adequately inform instruction but summative assessments can provide information to interim or formative systems, particularly for students who have outlying performance in some area or against some particular standard. In cases like that summative data might focus teachers on an area where more testing or diagnosing needs to be called for. For example a summative result at grade 5 could identify students who appear to be struggling in certain areas. The summative result might identify diagnostic components that could be administered at the beginning of grade 6. Summative and informative components should be built from common frameworks. I know teachers need authentic data generated from student’s actual experiences in the teaching and learning setting and we’ve gotten really good at doing what we call “taking their temperature” or “dip sticking,” or whatever you want to call it: very informal formative assessments. Teachers really need to look at all of their progress monitoring practices formed to assessments or what some people call “benchmarks,” and make sure that they are aligned to the new standards and assessments both in content and format. They also need to look carefully at their instructional materials and practices. They need to make sure those materials are tightly aligned to the common core standards and also they are being implicated with fidelity, an order that we provide students the tools they need to make progress and not fall behind. They need to monitor progress as frequently as necessary and in some cases more frequently than what they have in the past, so they know who’s falling behind and can intervene quickly and appropriately and also just to use formative, summative and diagnostic data to avoid the wait to fail model of intervention.
Sandy Fivecoat: Excellent. Just one final summary question George while we have you on the line: I’m really curious about teacher created assessments. I know a lot of teachers do a lot of, what you refer to as “informal assessment,” perhaps just verbal or “dip sticking” as you call it or just kind of ways to informally gauge how students are doing in the context of the curriculum and teaching. Do you have any ideas or thoughts about things that teachers could be doing in anticipation of both implementing the common core curriculum and making that transition but also thinking about how they change the way they dialog with students to check in with them to see how they’re doing? Are there any ideas or thoughts that you have in that?
George Islov: I think one thing that teachers can do and we have done this for a long time but we have done it more in termsof a classroom activity as opposed to an assessment activity, is to provide more opportunities for project based learning. Within project based learning you have the opportunity to do all kinds of check ins and informal assessments progress within the project framework. As we know there are going to be some performance tasks and in PARCC we have seen some of the prototype’s being released. This is also a very effective way of introducing students to more complex tasks that they’ll be assessed on at PARCC.
Sandy Fivecoat: Excellent. Like almost any other shift in curriculum and assessment they are very closely tied and excellent teaching methodology and assessment methodology are inextricably intertwined and best practice apply to both. These techniques and preparation for this great transition across the country that schools everywhere are going through is really well supported by your thoughts George. Your background and expertise really have come into play here and our teachers will be able to immediately apply many of the things that you suggested.
George Islov: Thank you very much. It’s been my pleasure.
Sandy Fivecoat: Unfortunately that’s all the time we have for today. George I want to thank you again for all the information. Now to our audience we would like to ask you to stay tuned for our top three “you should know” facts about the common core. We would also love to hear from you: if you can think of things you would like us to cover, feedback, topics you want us to address in future podcasts, we ask you to e-mail us at . Thanks again so much for joining us and have a great day.