Integrating Formative Assessment With Online Tasks

• In Event: Building and Validating Cognitively Based, Technology-Enhanced English Language Arts Assessments

Abstract

The adoption of the CCSS and the work of two national consortia -- Smarter Balanced and PARCC--has changed expectations for what and how students will learn and be assessed. Both consortia have theorized that to be successful, new assessment systems must positively impact classroom instruction and have therefore promised instructional models and training programs that support implementation of the CCSS and classroom-based formative assessment.
Critics have argued that professional development needs to go beyond implementation guidance to meet consortia expectations (Heritage, 2010; Hirsh, 2012). Research has shown that one-off professional development workshops and the provision of instructional materials without sustained training are unlikely to have substantial impact on classroom practices (Desimone, Porter, Birman, Garet, & Yoon, 2002; Ingvarson, Meiers, & Beavis, 2005). Thus there is need to create and implement professional development opportunities that are intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice; focused on specific curriculum content; aligned with school improvement goals; aimed at building strong working relationships among teachers; and focused on classroom assessment, learning progressions, and high leverage teaching practices (Croft, Coggshall, Dolan, Powers, & Killion, 2010; Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009).
Before the release of the CCSS, the Cognitively Based Assessment of, for, and as Learning (CBAL) initiative (Bennett & Gitomer, 2009) began investigating the type and amount of support that is necessary to help teachers with high-quality implementations of integrated systems that include summative assessments, classroom tasks, and detailed learning progressions.
In this poster we examine the implementation of the CBAL materials in one context and discuss the successes and challenges inherent in improving instruction, assessment, and ultimately student learning. In 2012-2013, three eighth-grade English Language Arts teachers piloted a series of argumentation-related CBAL materials, including an interim assessment to determine student needs, four formative task sets, and a summative assessment. Teachers were asked to integrate these tasks into their usual instruction so while the specifics of implementation varied by teacher, The suggested timeline involved a formative scenario, used to teach the argumentation skills, a first argumentation assessment, development of targeted instructional goals based on assessment results, use of targeted formative tasks to teach specific skills, and a final assessment.
Throughout the pilot, participating teachers met with researchers to reflect on the implementation, examine student responses with respect to the learning progressions, plan future instruction, and provide feedback on their experiences. The full poster will explore the teachers’ feedback and their implementation of learning progression-based assessment and instruction. Preliminary results indicate that the teachers had a positive experience with the CBAL materials and would use them in the future; that they integrated the materials into their instruction; and that they used student scores and instructional materials to differentiate instruction. In the full poster, approximately 250 student responses on both the interim and final summative assessments will be analyzed to understand how student knowledge of argumentation changed throughout the pilot. The poster will conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for supporting teachers’ implementation of online formative and summative assessments.

Authors

• Katherine Jueds, Educational Testing Service

• Christine Jennifer Lyon, ETS