FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN ACTION

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FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTIN ACTION

• W. James Popham
• University of California, Los Angeles
• Oakland Schoolsin Partnership with the Michigan
  Assessment Consortium
• NATIONAL SPEAKER SERIES
• Waterford, Michigan
• February 6, 2015

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Todays Foci Four Understandings about Formative
Assessment

• What It Is and What It Isnt
• What It Can Do and What It Cant
• One Cut of Formative Assessments Cake
• Why Learning Progressions Must Lurk

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Formative AssessmentWhat It Is

• Formative assessment is a planned process in
  which assessment-elicited evidence of students
  status is used by teachers to adjust their
  ongoing instructional procedures or by students
  to adjust their current learning-tactics.

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Formative Assessment What It Isnt

• It is not a test.
• It is not an interim test (also referred to as a
  benchmark or periodic test) administered every
  few months by schools or districts.
• It is not the unplanned, serendipitous use of
  student cues to adjust teaching.

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A Turn Talk Task

• Please turn to one or two nearby neighbors, if
  possible, selecting those who seem fairly bright.
  Assume they are not educators but, rather,
  laypeople who are concerned about our schools.
  They have asked you to tell them what is meant by
  this formative assessment stuff. Alternately,
  describe to each other what this label means.

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FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

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Why Michigan Teachers Should Routinely Employ
Formative Assessment

• School Accountability Because students
  performances on accountability tests will play a
  key role in determining a schools success.
• Teacher Evaluation Because the best evidence of
  student growth in teacher evaluation is apt to be
  students pre-post performance on classroom tests.

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A Turn Talk Task

• Please turn to one or two nearby colleagues, then
  take turns trying to persuade each other that
  teachers should use formative assessment on the
  basis of either (1) school accountability or (2)
  teacher evaluation. Thereafter, choose the other
  reason and, once more, trot out your persuasion
  ploys.

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Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do

• In a research review based on 250 empirical
  studies of classroom assessment that had been
  drawn from more than 680 published
  investigations, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
  concluded
• The research reported here shows conclusively
  that formative assessment does improve learning.
  (Assessment in Education, 1998)

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Formative AssessmentWhat It Can Do

• Two Other Quotes from the Research Review
• The student gains in learning triggered by
  formative assessment were amongst the largest
  ever reported for educational interventions.
• Significant gains can be achieved by many
  different routes, and initiatives here are not
  likely to fail through neglect of delicate and
  subtle features.

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And More Recently

• Five reviews of the research in this area
  synthesized a total of more than 4,000 research
  studies undertaken during the last 40 years. The
  conclusion was clear When implemented well,
  formative assessment can effectively double the
  speed of student learning. (Wiliam, Educational
  Leadership, 2007-2008)

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And Even More Recently

• There is now a strong body of theoretical and
  empirical work that suggests that integrating
  assessment with instruction may well have
  unprecedented power to increase student
  engagement and to improve learning outcomes.
  (Wiliam, D., 2011, Studies in Educational
  Evaluation)

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Besides Analytical and Empirical Undergirding,
Heres Spiritual Support

• On October 13, 2009, I received an e-mail from
  a colleague in Ohio, Dr. Saundra Brennan, who
  relayed to me an invitation she had received from
  the Ohio Association of Elementary School
  Administrators. It was to take part in
• A FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT WORSHIP

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Formative Assessment What It Cant Do

• It cannot raise scores sufficiently on
  instructionally insensitive accountability tests
  such as those so widely used these days to
  satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left
  Behind Act.

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A Definition of Instructional Sensitivity

• The degree to which students performances on
  a test accurately reflect the quality of
  instruction specifically provided to promote
  students mastery of what is being assessed.

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Why Might a Test Item be Instructionally
Insensitive?

• Alignment Leniency
• Excessive Easiness
• Excessive Difficulty
• Confusion-Engendering Item Flaws
• Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links
• Academic Aptitude Links

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Socioeconomic Status (SES) Links

• If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
  students from higher SES families, then the item
  will tend to measure what students bring to
  school rather than how well they are taught once
  they get there.

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A 4th-Grade Reading Item
My fathers field is computer graphics.

• In which of the sentences below does the word
  field mean the same thing as in the sentence
  above?
• A. The shortstop knew how to field his
• position.
• B. We prepared the field by plowing it.
• C. What field do you plan to enter when you
• graduate?
• D. The nurse examined my field of vision.

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Academic Aptitude Links

• If an item gives a meaningful advantage to
  students who possess greater inherited
  quantitative, verbal, or spatial aptitudes, then
  the item will tend to measure what students bring
  to school rather than how well they are taught
  once they get there.

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A 4th-Grade Mathematics Item

• Which of the letters below, when folded in half,
  will have two parts that match exactly?

F (A) Z (B)
S (C) B (D)
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A Turn Talk Task

• Turning to a colleague (If you seem to be running
  out of bright neighbors, you might move to
  another group.), assume that your colleague is
  not familiar with instructional sensitivity.
  Thus, please explain to your colleague what
  instructional sensitivity is, and how it can
  reduce the accurate evaluation of teachers or
  schools. Then switch roles.

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Why Partitioning It Can Pay Off

• We will now consider a partitioning proposal,
  that is, a four-level view of formative
  assessment. Although this and other partitioning
  schemes should cleave to the essence of
  research-ratified formative assessment, they
  often help teachers clamber aboard the
  formative-assessment flotilla.

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Four Levels of the Formative-Assessment Process

• Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
• Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
• Level 3 Classroom Climate Shift
• Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation

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Level 4 Strategies 1. Professional Development 2.
Teacher Learning Communities

• Level 3 Shifts
• Learning Expectations
• Responsibility for learning
• Role of classroom assessment

Four Levels of Formative Assessment
Level 4 Schoolwide Implementation
Level 3 Classroom-Climate Shift
Level 2 Students Learning-Tactic Adjustments
Level 1 Teachers Instructional Adjustments
Learning Progressions

• Teachers Level 1 Steps
• Identify adjustment occasions.
• Select assessments.
• Establish adjustment triggers.
• Make instructional adjustments?

• Students Level 2 Steps
• 1. Consider adjustment occasions.
• Consider assessments.
• Consider adjustment triggers.
• Adjust learning-tactics?

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Formative AssessmentWhy Learning Progressions
Must Lurk

• (What a learning progression is)
• A learning progression is a sequenced set of
  building blocks (that is, subskills and/or bodies
  of enabling knowledge) it is thought students
  must master en route to mastering a more remote,
  target curricular aim.

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Two Learning ProgressionsBoth Useful to
Educators

• Upper-case LEARNING PROGRESSIONS
• Lower-case Learning Progressions

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Target Curriculum Aim X
Subskill B
An Illustrative Learning Progression
Enabling Knowledge B
Subskill A
Enabling Knowledge A
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A Horizontally Represented Learning Progression
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Formative AssessmentWhat a Learning
Progression is not

• A learning progression isnt unerringly accurate.
• A particular learning progression isnt going to
  work for all students.
• A learning progression isnt necessarily better
  because its more complicated.

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A Final Turn Talk Task

• Why, despite substantial empirical evidence to
  support formative assessment, are most Michigan
  teachers not actually using it in their own
  classes? Please explore this question with a
  neighbor or with your entire small group. Can you
  come up with any ameliorative fixes?

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To travel more suavely along the
formative-assessment trail, read one or more of
these encapsulations of wisdom

• Heritage, M., Formative Assessment Making It
  Happen in the Classroom, 2010, Corwin
• Popham, W.J., Transformative Assessment, 2008,
  ASCD
• Popham, W. J., Transformative Assessment in
  Action, 2011, ASCD
• Wiliam, D., Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011,
  Solution Tree

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• Genial Jims e-mail address
• wpopham_at_ucla.edu