Conceptual Physics
Student assessment
is a balancing act
What are performance based assessments?
Performance based assessment is one alternative to traditional methods of testing student achievement. While traditional testing requires students to answer questions correctly (often on a multiple-choice test), performance assessment requires students to demonstrate knowledge and skills, including the process by which they solve problems. Performance assessments measure skills such as the ability to integrate knowledge across disciplines, contribute to the work of a group, and develop a plan of action when confronted with a new situation. Performance assessments are also appropriate for determining if students are achieving the higher standards set by states for all students. The Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress described performance assessment as testing that requires a student to create an answer or a product that demonstrates his or her knowledge or skills. One key feature of all performance assessments is that they require students to be active participants. They also focus attention on how students arrive at their answers and require students to demonstrate the knowledge or skills needed to obtain a correct answer. To illustrate, if high school juniors are asked to demonstrate their understanding of interest rates by shopping for a used-car loan (i.e., comparing the interest rates of banks and other lending agencies and identifying the best deal), a teacher can easily see if the students understand the concept of interest, know how it is calculated, and are able to perform mathematical operations accurately.
Examples
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Group projects enabling a number of students to work together on a complex problem that requires planning, research, internal discussion, and group presentation.
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Essays assessing students' understanding of a subject through a written description, analysis, explanation, or summary.
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Experiments testing how well students understand scientific concepts and can carry out scientific processes.
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Demonstrations giving students opportunities to show their mastery of subject-area content and procedures.
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Portfolios allowing students to provide a broad portrait of their performance through files that contain collections of students' work, assembled over time.
What Are the Advantages of Assessing This Way?
Instruction in most subject areas is being altered to include more practical applications of skills and to incorporate a greater focus on the understanding and combining of content and skills. Performance assessments closely tied to this new way of teaching provide teachers with more information about the learning needs of their students and enable them to modify their methods to meet these needs. They also allow students to assess their own progress and, therefore, be more responsible for their education. Advocates of performance assessment believe these tests will prompt educators and school officials to identify the skills and knowledge they want their students to acquire and to focus on teaching students this information. It also provides educators with information about what students have learned, not just how well they can learn.
This information can be found @ www.projectappleseed.org
What are formative and summative assessments?
The terms “formative” and “summative” do not have to be difficult, yet the definitions have become confusing in the past few years. This is especially true for formative assessment. In a balanced assessment system, both summative and formative assessments are an integral part of information gathering. Depend too much on one or the other and the reality of student achievement in your classroom becomes unclear. Summative Assessments are given periodically to determine at a particular point in time what students know and do not know. Many associate summative assessments only with standardized tests such as state assessments, but they are also used at and are an important part of district and classroom programs. Summative assessment at the district and classroom level is an accountability measure that is generally used as part of the grading process. The list is long, but here are some examples of summative assessments:
• State assessments
• District benchmark or interim assessments
• End-of-unit or chapter tests
• End-of-term or semester exams
• Scores that are used for accountability of schools (AYP) and students (report card grades).
The key is to think of summative assessment as a means to gauge, at a particular point in time, student learning relative to content standards. Although the information gleaned from this type of assessment is important, it can only help in evaluating certain aspects of the learning process. Because they are spread out and occur after instruction every few weeks, months, or once a year, summative assessments are tools to help evaluate the effectiveness of programs, school improvement goals, alignment of curriculum, or student placement in specific programs. Summative assessments happen too far down the learning path to provide information at the classroom level and to make instructional adjustments and interventions during the learning process. It takes formative assessment to accomplish this.
Formative Assessment is part of the instructional process. When incorporated into classroom practice, it provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. In this sense, formative assessment informs both teachers and students about student understanding at a point when timely adjustments can be made. These adjustments help to ensure students achieve targeted standardsbased learning goals within a set time frame. Although formative assessment strategies appear in a variety of formats, there are some distinct ways to distinguish them from summative assessments. One distinction is to think of formative assessment as “practice.” We do not hold students accountable in “grade book fashion” for skills and concepts they have just been introduced to or are learning. We must allow for practice. Formative assessment helps teachers determine next steps during the learning process as the instruction approaches the summative assessment of student learning. A good analogy for this is the road test that is required to receive a driver’s license. What if, before getting your driver’s license, you received a grade every time you sat behind the wheel to practice driving? What if your final grade for the driving test was the average of all of the grades you received while practicing? Because of the initial low grades you received during the process of learning to drive, your final grade would not accurately reflect your ability to drive a car. In the beginning of learning to drive, how confident or motivated to learn would you feel? Would any of the grades you received provide you with guidance on what you needed to do next to improve your driving skills? Your final driving test, or summative assessment, would be the accountability measure that establishes whether or not you have the driving skills necessary for a driver’s license—not a reflection of all the driving practice that leads to it. The same holds true for classroom instruction, learning, and assessment.
Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students. There are numerous strategies teachers can implement to engage students. In fact, research shows that the involvement in and ownership of their work increases students’ motivation to learn. This does not mean the absence of teacher involvement. To the contrary, teachers are critical in identifying learning goals, setting clear criteria for success, and designing assessment tasks that provide evidence of student learning. such limited feedback does not lead to improved student learning. There are many classroom instructional strategies that are part of the repertoire of good teaching. When teachers use sound instructional practice for the purpose of gathering information on student learning, they are applying this information in a formative way. In this sense, formative assessment is pedagogy and clearly cannot be separated from instruction. It is what good teachers do. The distinction lies in what teachers actually do with the information they gather. How is it being used to inform instruction? How is it being shared with and engaging students? It’s not teachers just collecting information/data on student learning; it’s what they do with the information they collect.
Text taken directly from Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom: Catherine Garrison and Michael Ehringhaus, Ph. D.
The Balancing Act
Students arrive in our classes with many strengths and weaknesses. It is our job to identify these attributes, assess them, and use that data to improve upon both ends of the spectrum. We can accomplish this by teaching, delivering content, and varying our assessments in the classroom. Our curriculum centers around a guided inquiry approach to learning where students are tasked with a problem and through a guided exploration or activity, arrive at an answer and discover a scientific concept through the process.
In order to ensure students are mastering concepts, we must finds ways to assess all students along this journey. These assessments should provided data on students of all skill level. From that data set, teachers should be able to draw out "what is" happening now in the classroom and "what should" be done in the future to improve student understanding. It is foolish to think or accept that one type of assessment can produce data than can fully answer both of these questions. Formative assessments allow teachers to essentially "test the waters" and gain instant insight into content knowledge recall and retention. However these assessment are limited in their scope and depth. Summative assessments build on the data from these formative assessments. They help prepare students for standardized testing and courses that rely heavily on on finals for grading. These assessments are essential for providing the teacher with data that reflects how well the students have understood and can recall content specific questions that are standard based.
We are also trying to produce a population of students well versed in not only recalling facts, but real-world problem solvers as well. Therefore we must embed these skills in the curriculum and find unique ways to assess them as well. These skills are not reflected in formative and summative assessments. They instead are demonstrated through performance based assessments. "Performance tasks range from short activities taking only a few minutes to projects culminating in polished products for audiences in and outside of the classroom. In the beginning, most performance tasks should fall on the short end of the continuum. Time management, individual responsibility, honesty, persistence, and intrapersonal skills, such as appreciation of diversity and working cooperatively with others, are examples of work habits necessary for an individual to be successful in life." These are some of the skills assessed through performance based projects.
Teacher's Guide to Performance-Based Learning and Assessment by K. Michael Hibbard et all.
All students should be taught every skill necessary needed to navigate life successfully. We are fortunate to have a curriculum that enables our students the chances to experience these skills. Our students will be traditionally assessed with pencil and paper exams as well as performanced based assessments throughout the year. The easiest way I explain this balanced assessment method to the students is the following: formative and summative assessments help students prove "What do you know?" and performanced based assessments let students prove "This is what I can do with what I learned".