Differentiated Assessment

How to Assess the Learning Potential of Every Student (Grades 6-12)

Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, Deborah Meier

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470909638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

A comprehensive assessment system for working with underperforming students

This book describes a comprehensive assessment system especially appropriate for multilingual and "differentiated" classrooms with large numbers of underperforming students. Drawing from Multiple Intelligences theory, the approach is specifically aimed at helping teachers understand how each student learns and how best to tailor instruction to serve individual students' needs. Although the program makes use of conventional standardized tests and disability screenings, it places special importance on two approaches in particular: Student Portfolio Assessments and Personalized Learning Profiles.

• Provides detailed guidance and practical tools (including a DVD) for implementing successful portfolio and "profile" practices in the classroom
• Includes real-world examples of model assessment programs from five schools
• Explains how to integrate assessment into the instructional process as well as how the portfolio program can be used

Formal profiles provide vital information about each student's cultural background, interests, strengths, and capabilities as well as their individual learning and language needs.

Part I

The Context of Learning for Today and Tomorrow

Chapter 1

Education for the 21st Century

Diverse Students and Learning Challenges

Advice to the U.S. President from Education Leaders

Our president has to look at how we are going to bring our school system into the 21st century…. We have been operating the most unequal educational system in the industrialized world, with dramatically different resources available to different students. At this point in the knowledge economy, what kids need to be able to do is to frame and solve their own problems, find and manage information, organize themselves in teams, and—with collaboration—tackle novel issues. We need to focus our curriculum on standards that evaluate how people can think and problem solve and invent and create and use knowledge in new ways and continue to learn independently. That means we have to change the assessments that we use. Most countries in the world that are high achieving have assessments that ask students to think and problem solve and investigate and conduct research. We are still having our kids bubble-in multiple-choice tests, which focus on recall and recognition rather than on these higher order thinking skills.

Linda Darling-Hammond

Are the 21st-century learning environments that educational leaders call schools designed to reveal and teach to the abilities of the learners they serve? Several critical questions, as Linda Darling-Hammond suggests, plague U.S. educators as they strive to develop programs and policies that reach and teach every child:

• How do we educate today's diverse population of adolescents to become tomorrow's global citizens?
• How can research on learning and teaching help update educational assessment policies and practices?
• How do we comprehensively assess what these individuals now know and will need to know?
• How do we “differentiate” assessment to address diverse learning abilities?
• How does differentiated assessment lead to differentiated instruction that will enable schools truly to leave no child behind?

These are the essential questions that guide this book, Differentiated Assessment: How to Assess the Learning Potential of Every Student. If we ask these questions in New York City, we may find that differentiated assessment is alive and well in today's classrooms but still rarely acknowledged as the judgment that counts. In the New York public schools, as in most U.S. schools, test scores rather than classroom work determine whether students make the grade (Harris Stefanakis, 1998b). In other words, students' test scores—not the body of work they compile at school over the years—is what counts.

Because of current testing policies, we are leaving children behind, including many who are potentially gifted or are English language learners or have special educational needs. Are we failing our students because we are not recognizing their abilities? Are we relying on one type of test to determine all individuals' futures, rather than on multiple assessments that reflect the diversity of the human mind? As a policymaker and educator, it saddens me to report what I have observed. Simply put, we are failing our students by using obsolete assessments that inaccurately and inadequately measure their abilities. In fact, I often doubt that students' learning abilities, those of adolescents in particular, are visible to those who teach them or to those who would presume to judge whether they are “intelligent.” Therefore, in this book I will focus particularly on adolescent learners, including those who may be labeled gifted, learning disabled, or English language learners, all of whom present specific learning challenges.

The following example is from a true story that appeared on the New York Times op-ed page.

New York Times Op-Ed: Failing Our Students!

By Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, Op-Ed Contributor

January 8, 2006

Beginning this week, New York City's fourth graders will take the state's standardized tests in reading and writing. Many people are looking forward to a repeat of last year, when the city celebrated a nearly 10 percent increase in fourth-grade reading scores. But not everyone is sharing in the anticipation.

Luis Castro, a 12-year-old from the Dominican Republic, is worried that he will not pass the test and thus be forced to repeat the fourth grade, again. Like so many over-age immigrant students at the school he attends on the Lower East Side, Luis is as tall as most seventh graders, has an incipient mustache, and is tired of being teased. Worse, he's afraid of disappointing his parents, who, like so many other immigrants, have pinned their hopes on their children.

New York City schools base their decision on whether to promote students entirely on results from the state achievement exams. But these tests, which are written for native English speakers, discriminate against those who are still learning the language.

Luis is a perfect case in point. His schoolwork shows that he has made significant progress since September and that he has met state standards in the work he has completed. But when Luis takes state tests, he is unable to quickly comprehend what he reads in English, and that hurts his performance . . . and his score.

Today, this is the judgment that counts, but the impact of this policy is hurting large numbers of intelligent children.

Even by conservative estimates, immigrant children like Luis account for close to half the student population in public schools across New York State. The same is true in many urban environments across the U.S. and internationally.

Doing well isn't simply a matter of knowing English. Standardized tests measure children's knowledge of “cognitive academic language,” or the language of a highly literate population. Students in middle-class areas like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Park Slope, and Riverdale are well versed in this language.

But students in Washington Heights, Corona, East Brooklyn, and other low-income, immigrant communities do not read, write, or speak [English] fluently. In most cases, neither their parents nor other adults they come in contact with speak this language to them, and yet, they are required to learn it to pass state tests and be promoted. Their test scores reflect the fact that they often must literally translate as they work, either from their native language to English, or from the version of English they speak in their minority community to cognitive academic English.

What is needed is “differentiated assessment” that looks at the learner's abilities in the context of a collection of evidence that provides information on what that child knows and is able to do. What does this mean in practice in the daily learning environment?

The solution to this problem, already used by many schools and districts in other parts of the country, is to use a student's body of work, or portfolio, as an additional means of assessment. Where standardized tests alone reveal only the language differences of students, a growing body of research shows that a combination of formal tests and informal assessments can indicate their progress. Portfolios, in particular, capture both the process and products of students' learning and reflect their multiple languages, multiple intelligences, and multiple abilities.

Perhaps even more important, an approach that includes portfolios would not only improve assessments of immigrant students, but would also help ensure that they receive a good education. Portfolios reveal what is being taught and help to ensure that teachers regularly observe and document the learning of each student.

Skeptics may ask, couldn't schools, under pressure to show progress, simply rubber-stamp portfolios regardless of quality? No, because, just as with statewide tests, there are clear, codified standards for judging portfolios. In math, for example, young children must demonstrate counting, numeration, and data-analysis skills.

But couldn't teachers or parents polish up a child's portfolio to make it look more impressive than it really is? That's probably true, just as it's true for any homework assignment, but the student would still be required to take standardized tests, which would reveal any discrepancies.

Differentiated assessment practices are growing nationally in the U.S.

Georgia, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Virginia have been among the leaders in adopting standards-based testing programs using portfolios and alternative assessments for bilingual students and those with limited English proficiency. Even though the state achievement tests are scheduled for this week, it's not too late for New York City schools to follow the lead of these states. In making their promotion decisions, indivi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• More Praise for Differentiated Assessment
• Jossey-Bass Teacher
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About This Book
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I: The Context of Learning for Today and Tomorrow
• Part II: Case Studies of Differentiated Assessment
• Part III: Seeing Students' Assets: Differentiated Assessment Guides Instruction
• Appendix: DVD Table of Contents
• References and Resources
• Index
• How to Use the DVD-ROM