Blog Post 1: Assessment, Assessment, Authentic?

            If this year showed me anything, we are a nation with an addiction to assessment.  Whether we are assessing our president or assessing ourselves, assessment is constantly being referenced in all parts of our society. The question needs to be asked then: Are we truly authentically assessing students when it comes to progress in education?  Through all of the reading this week, I kept coming upon the idea of validity and reliability.  As I begin prepping for my second year of FSA, I’m thinking to myself already, how do I create valid and reliable assessments to help my students progress?

            Interestingly enough, the idea of reading assessment never really graced my mind when planning my lessons.  Because our students already have a reading class (most of them), the idea of placing emphasis on reading for fluency or comprehension is not emphasized a lot.  However, as the new round of FSA assessments and curriculum standards become implemented into the curriculum, reading will find yet a new meaning in my classroom.  As Fisher and Frey (2010) show, when considering curriculum based assessments, educators should know that these assessments “are a central feature of student progress monitoring and decision making about instruction and intervention” (p. 95). In our curriculum, we have a lot of assessments to show student progress, but students don’t necessarily know how well they are doing when it comes to reading fluency per say.  In high school, many view that fluency should already be established.  The truth is: some students have it and some students do not.  How can we remedy it?

            As a high school English teacher, I never really see myself needing to assess fluency.  But after reading a lot of these articles, reading assessment doesn’t need to end in the early grades. As shown by Boudett, et. al, one has to take into consideration what purpose is the assessment.  They show, “Most achievement testing is aimed at reaching conclusions about students’ proficiency in a broad domain of achievement…the quality of that inference- that is the degree to which the inference is supported by performance on the test…” (Boudett, et. al, 2013, p. 37). A lot of the assessments our curriculum utilizes can range from broad sampling to pinpointing what students are struggling on. The authors’ mentioning of inference made me think of the authenticity of the assessment.  Many times when I give an assessment, I usually do it out of sheer thinking of: Well it is the end of the unit; let us see what they know.  Based on the results, I go…well here is your grade. But as Boudett, et. al shows, that kind of thinking does not show or encourage student progress.

            In planning for this year, I have been going through my head and thinking about, what can I do to help my students understand the nature of assessments? Do they need to know or is this more for the teacher?  As Caldwell (2008) shows, “Teachers often are not specific enough with regard to the purpose of an assessment” (Caldwell, 2008, p. 252).  This lead me to believe that yes, there is a way to include students in on the conversation when it comes to assessment. Further, when choosing the thing to assess, I have to be quite diligent and making sure it is something every student can produce, and now some. Caldwell (2008) speaks of this when discussing the aspect of missing work as assessment, commenting, “How can you judge performance from something that does not exist or something you have not seen?  Missing work, whether it is homework or a major project, should be assigned to the effort side of the ledger” (p. 258). The right assessments should be decided upon on the result, not necessarily the effort.

            But, there is the state assessment. In light of all of the calamity with the FSA assessments, the legislature prompted a recall on all assessments, saying it would cut down the number of assessments given. But as a teacher, I start asking myself, how authentic is this assessment? It seemingly comes back to this idea of validity. “Proof of this lack of bias is that students of similar levels of achievement should earn similar scores regardless of group status… Test developers test their measures and procedures for bias through their sampling procedures and through item analyses across different…population[s]” (Invernizzi, et. al, 2005, p. 613).  Several assessments given by the state do not adequately take into consideration the idea of a student’s background or their ability to adapt give their current situations. Does that mean state assessments are invalid?  Not necessarily.

            State assessments like FCAT and FSA  do adequately assess the set of standards. However, they do not all show the right amount of “stuff” that students have learned.  The idea of portfolios was brought up several time in the readings this week.  “Research indicates that portfolio assessment can be more effective than single, static measures of student achievement” (Alvermann, et. al, 2011, p.156).  This is something that we have been using with students’ writing, but we have never tried it for reading.  As Afflerbach (2004) shows, “Reading assessment should reflect performance over multiple time points with various texts and purposes…Assessment should measure a wide range of skills with a variety of formats and responses” (p. 12).  This would show best in terms of portfolios. But how to adequately do this is indeed the question.

References

Afflerbach, P. (2004). “National reading conference policy brief  high stakes testing and reading

      assessment”. Unversity of Maryland. Pgs. 1-18.

Alvermann, D.E., Phelps, S.F., and Gillis, V.R. (2011). Content area reading and literacy (6^th ed.).

      Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Boudett, K.P., City, E.A., Murnane, R.J. (2013). Data wise: A step-by-step guide to using assessment

      results to improve teaching and learning. (2nd Ed.).  MA: Harvard Education Press. 

Caldwell, J.S. (2008). Reading assessment: A primer for teachers and coaches (2^nd edition). NY: The

     Guilford Press.

Fisher, D. and Frey, N. (2010). Enhancing RTI: How to ensure success with effective classroom

      instruction and intervention. VA: ASCD. 

Invernizzi, M.A., Landrum, T.J., Howell, J.L., Warley, HP. (2005). “Toward the peaceful coexistence

     of test developers, policymakers, and teachers in an era of accountability”. The Reading Teacher.

     58(7). Pgs. 610-618.