Formative Assessment in Mathematics: The Data Collection Methodology

• In Event: Exploring the Current Status of Formative Assessments in California’s P-12 Schools as Compared With Schools Nationwide: A National Science Foundation-Funded Project

Abstract

Since a Nation at Risk, policy makers and legislators have focused numbers of pages, amounts of time, and many financial resources on urging a focus on standards. They have argued, during these intervening years, that schools have not had standards. When they have them, the standards are low. It may be the case that new standards are argued for, but the guides for action in the minds of district administrators and assessment developers, let alone of teachers in classrooms, are the guided by old meanings about standards and notions of learning and achievement that have existed for a long time. Without understanding what is going on in practice and the meanings that guide those actions, it is difficult to know what has to change and what would have to be addressed for change to occur.

This presentation seeks an understanding of the standards and the standard setting process enunciated by those advancing the common core standards, those who create classroom assessments, and those who encourage their use in classrooms in school districts. The data to answer these questions were ascertained from the Formative Assessment in Mathematics (FAM) Project at UCD using survey data from principals and school district assessment directors in California, and professional test publishers about the use of formative assessment tools and practices in their respective areas.

After using general descriptive statistics to analyze these data, we determined which districts appear to have a greater and more appropriate use of formative assessment practices underway in the classrooms of schools of the district. A similar analysis was done using the survey data from test publishers. Follow-up interviews with the assessment directors and test publishers obtained more detailed answers about the meanings and understandings each have of the core standards and assessments currently in use.

Those interview data were qualitatively analyzed and the resulting categories and descriptors revealed the meanings about standards and assessments of those in school districts. We discussed and explored the degree to which these instantiated meanings about standards and the assessments of student learning differ between the assessment directors and the assessment developers. Finally, we analyzed and determined the fit between the findings of these analyses and those highlighted in other empirical studies about the fidelity of implementation of standards found in the measurement literature. We suggested lessons that these different findings may have for advancing new and more powerful standards and assessments in districts, schools, and classrooms.

Alignment between new standards, desired assessment practices, and their use in classrooms is more likely to happen when the meanings held by those who are to influence their use in classrooms correspond to the meanings of those who designed the standards and the assessment practices. When they do not match, there is a greater likelihood of nonevents occurring, which become accepted as the new normal but which have little impact on student learning.

Author

• Paul E. Heckman, University of California - Davis