Validation of Instructional and Assessment Tasks in Literacy

• In Event: From the Common Core State Standards to Rigorous Instructional Practice: Creating Knowledge Around the Development and Use of Formative Assessment Tools

Abstract

Perspective and Methodology

Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) is developing tools that can be used formatively by teachers to measure students’ acquisition of literacy skills. These tools are templates that can be customized by ELA, social studies, and science teachers into tasks designed to facilitate CCSS-based literacy instruction, reinforce student learning and provide feedback about what students know and can do in relation to the CCSS. LDC’s templates are grounded in formative assessment theory and research. Developers hold that use of this type of formative assessment tool may enable the development of literacy skills and ensure that students’ acquisition of traditionally hard-to-measure knowledge and skills is examined during instruction (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004; Heritage, Kim, Vendlinski, & Herman, 2008).

Researchers are supporting this work by evaluating the LDC templates and teacher-developed tasks. This paper presents findings from early analyses. To test the alignment, quality and utility of the tasks, researchers asked secondary level teachers in ELA, social studies, and science from pilot sites to develop customized literacy tasks from an LDC template. Researchers collected 14 tasks and 29 samples of student work and evaluated each, using the following criteria and research questions:
• Task-Specific Alignment: Does evidence suggest that the task measures the CCSS ELA and literacy standards as intended?
• Quality: Is the task clear, fair, and accessible to the target student population? Does it elicit an appropriate range of responses? Does it elicit responses that allow insight into how students complete the task?
• Utility: Is the task useful for discriminating among students with different literacy skills? Is it useful for assessing progress on those standards that are challenging to measure with traditional assessments?

Results and Significance

Researchers found that every task in this sample was aligned to one or more CCSS ELA standards in both reading and writing. In terms of quality, 79% of the tasks in this sample were rated as demonstrating strong evidence of clarity and appropriateness for use with students in the target population. In terms of utility, 86% of the tasks were rated as demonstrating strong evidence of usefulness for supporting literacy instruction. Nearly all tasks were found to address a skill (e.g., conducting research or writing a report) that is challenging to measure with traditional assessments. Detailed findings are reported in the paper.

Findings from this early phase of work suggest that the templates hold promise as tools for teachers seeking to support and monitor student acquisition of literacy skills. The tasks in this sample were strongly linked to the CCSS and showed evidence of both quality and utility when used formatively. Through subsequent rounds of development and validation, the study team will collect additional evidence about the types of tasks that enable optimal implementation and examine the ways in which the teacher-developed tasks are associated with improvements in students’ literacy skills.

Authors

• Carole J. Gallagher, WestEd

• Stanley N. Rabinowitz, WestEd