Impacts of the Ongoing Assessment Project (OGAP) on Teacher and Student Learning

• In Event: 69.052 - Using Research-Based Formative Assessment to Improve Access to Mathematics in Urban Schools

Abstract

Purpose

This paper presents the impacts of OGAP on grades 3-5 teachers’ formative assessment knowledge and the learning of their students, using the two innovative instrument described in the previous presentation. Schools in the treatment group received OGAP professional development and support for teachers and a range of OGAP resources, as described in the introduction. Control schools participated in business-as-usual math instruction and professional development.

Perspectives

The design of the OGAP study is based a logic model suggesting that through participation in professional development, regular PLCs focused on analyzing student work, and using OGAP tools, teachers’ knowledge of learning progressions in multiplicative reasoning and fractions would increase, as would their ability to undertake key practices of the formative assessment cycle, including analyze student work with respect to learning progressions and develop evidence based instructional responses (Author, 2015). Further, teachers’ knowledge and capacity in the domain of learning progression-focused formative assessment would lead to classroom practices that provide robust opportunities for students to develop sophistication and proficiency with respect to the two mathematical domains.

Methods and Data

Teacher formative assessment knowledge was assessed using TASK, described in the previous paper, to measure teachers knowledge and use of formative assessment practices to inform instruction (Author, 2013). Student impacts were measured using a set of open-ended word problems that focused on knowledge of multiplication and fractions. Scoring attended to both correctness and problem solving strategy sophistication.
TASK was administered to teachers from treatment and control schools in the Fall of 2014, before the intervention began, and again in the Spring of 2015 and 2016. Students from all schools were administered the open-ended assessment in September of 2014, May 2015, and May 2016.

Results and significance

The results reported below are for the project’s first year (2014-15). We are currently analyzing the 2015-2016 results and will incorporate them into the paper.
Teacher Results: After controlling for baseline TASK score and nesting teachers with schools, treatment teachers (n=285) scored significantly higher than control teachers (n=248) (F(2,446)=64.54, p<.001).

Student Results: The results indicated impacts on students in 4th and 5th grades, but not 3rd grade. After controlling for pretest and nesting students within schools, 4th grade students (n=3,984) in the 30 treatment schools (n=1,882) scored significantly higher at the end of the first year of treatment than students in the 30 control schools (n=2,102) on the assessment of students’ multiplicative reasoning (p=.02). In 5th grade, after controlling for pretest and nesting students within schools, 5th grade students in the treatment group (n=1,671) scored significantly higher at the end of the first year than students in the control schools (n=1,784) (p<.001). For both 4th and 5th grades, the sophistication of treatment students’ strategies was significantly higher than that of control students (p=.03; p=.02, respectively). These findings demonstrate a substantial impact of OGAP on teachers and students, after one year of implementation. Although further investigation is warranted, we hypothesize that implementation in 3rd grade was limited because multiplication is not introduced until the spring in prescribed curriculum.

Authors

• Jonathan A. Supovitz, University of Pennsylvania

• Abigail Gray, University of Pennsylvania

• Maurice Spillane, Center for Policy Research in Education