Short Cycle Assessment

Improving Student Achievement Through Formative Assessment

Susan Lang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317923053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book shows you how to improve student achievement by providing them with frequent feedback on their work.

It provides a step-by-step process to help you write good questions that asses student learning, design your own formative assessments, administer short-cycle assessments, analyze and use data to shape instruction, prepare your students for high-stakes tests, and includes activities and forms to walk you through the process step by step.

Part I

An Introduction
to Short-Cycle Assessments

1

The Long and the
Short of Short-Cycle
Assessments

Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.

Haim G. Ginott

What is the Background Framework for this Work?

Professional development of teachers and improvement of their abilities have become frequent topics in the ongoing debate surrounding educational policy and reform. Schools, more than many professions, go through constant periods of change that require new training. The short-cycle assessment process came about from two approaches: the Objectives-Based Approach and Understanding by Design Model (UBD). Both approaches have a common ideology to the SCORE Process. With the focus on standards through a backward cycle, the SCORE Process promotes the essential questions in the collaborative learning community and data analysis sessions. This causes a teacher to contemplate why they teach instead of just what they teach.

Objectives-Based Approach

The objectives-based system does not by itself constitute an instructional program. Rather, it is intended to assist teachers in assessing students’ skill development and in locating existing curricula that are appropriate to students’ strengths and weaknesses. The idea upon which objectives-based systems are based is an appealing one. It asks the question of “wouldn’t teachers’ jobs be easier if they could find a simple way to monitor individual children’s mastery of specific objectives and had access to appropriate instructional resources for teaching those objectives?” The success of the objectives-based system rests on several key variables though; the criterion-referenced tests must be reliable indicators of skill mastery, the testing, recording, and grouping requirements must be organized well enough so that teachers can implement them, and instructional materials or activities that are genuinely effective in teaching the specific comprehension skills must be identified.

Understanding by Design Model

Collaborative Learning (CL) is based on a process of teamwork in which students are encouraged to help each other gain a long-term understanding of important skills and concepts (Davidson, 1994). Understanding by Design (UBD) can then facilitate in improving academic outcomes within a CL setting. According to UBD pioneers Wiggins and McTighe (1998), the goal of the UBD approach is to help students retain knowledge more effectively by providing a memorable and personal learning experience. This is contrary to more traditional curriculum that tends to follow the progression of identifying objectives, implementing lesson plans, and then giving an assessment of results. Instead the UBD framework uses a “backward design process” that identifies assessments before planning learning experiences and lessons. This way the desired results can be more appropriately identified (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998).

The UBD model is centered on what are known as essential questions (EQs) for which simple “yes” or “no” or one word responses do not work. Instead, EQs are thought-provoking and necessitate complex answers. Within a CL setting, students can feed off of each other’s responses to explore the topic on a deeper level (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). This is one of the most efficient ways in which UBD and CL can work together to facilitate the experiential learning process.

According to Wiggins and McTighe, teachers should do whatever it takes to make it easier for students to focus on the “big picture,” helping students understand what is really important. All too often teachers spend weeks on a particular unit and when assessment time arrives the teacher finds that many students did not grasp the “big picture.” UBD asks teachers to determine what students should understand about a subject and then, working backward, develop lesson plans and assessment to help reach that goal. Wiggins and McTighe (1998) explain the benefits to this reversal as follows:

Like other design professions, such as architecture, engineering, or graphic arts, designers in education must be mindful of their audiences. Professionals in these fields are strongly client centered. The effectiveness of their designs corresponds to whether they have accomplished their goals for the end users. Clearly, students are our primary clients, given that the effectiveness of curriculum, assessment, and instructional designs is ultimately determined by their achievement of desired learning (p.7).

There are overarching EQs that span an entire year and unit EQs. At the end of each unit students must demonstrate a competent answer to the EQs through a performance-based assessment. The power of this kind of design is it causes teachers to contemplate why they teach a particular lesson and keeps them from teaching it just because they “like it.” This approach gives students the opportunity to act on their newly acquired knowledge and to show that they understand the true meaning (Davidson, 1994).

Within the Collaborative Learning context, the UBD approach helps to ensure that when students come together in groups, individual group members will make valuable contributions to the groups’ understanding of key themes and ideas. By working backwards to determine desired outcomes, as well as by focusing on EQs, teachers can make the most efficient and effective use of collaboration and minimize wasted time and effort.

Finally, Professional Learning Communities offers a context for the process of SCORE. Richard Dufours’ work establishes the profession of teaching as a continuation of learning within the context of improvement. Critical friends group (CFG) within school buildings has been an effective way of studying successful best practices. The SCORE Process encourages the collaboration and professional learning time with teachers to develop assessments that are common and review data to change instructional practices.

As SCORE is implemented in a building(s) and/or district, changes occur within a teacher’s skill set as well as their attitudes the further along they are in the process. Many times when innovation and change begins there is a negative perception until success and understanding is acquired by the majority of the staff. The models/approaches mentioned above set a framework for the short-cycle assessment process and offer an understanding to the “big idea” behind the strategy for achievement.

What are Short-Cycle Assessments?

Short-cycle assessments are tests given several times over the course of the school year with the intention of preparing students for the high-stakes test. Almost all states give a test designed to assess students on what they have learned based on the content standards that state has deemed necessary. These tests can take many different formats including written responses, multiple-choice, or a demonstration of learning.

So why the need for short-cycle assessments? Imagine taking a course in college where all the homework you did, all the presentations you gave, and all the class discussion you participated in meant nothing. The only thing that will determine your grade for that course is going to be the pencil-to-paper test given over the course of 1 week. This is daunting enough when you have a 10-week class. Now imagine a 35-week-long course. How intimidating is that?

That is what public schools are doing. All the work a student does in class does not mean anything compared to the state assessment. The student may have demonstrated mastery of a particular skill time and time again over the course of a class but if the student bubbles or fills in the wrong answer circle on the high-stakes test, as far as the state is concerned, the student is deficient in that skill.

As an administrator why would you want to wait to see how your students did on the state test? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the teacher of that class to offer tests every few weeks using the same format so that students are completely prepared for the final? This would act as a good predictor of how students are going to perform. The short-cycle assessment process is like going to a baseball game. While you are engaged in the game you watch how the innings play out. You don’t just wait for the ending score; instead, you keep track of the score inning by inning. That’s what short-cycle assessments are. They are written in the same format and cover the same content as the final assessment, only in smaller pieces. Suddenly that final assessment does not seem so daunting but simply the final puzzle that you’ve been putting pieces into all year long. Hence short-cycle assessments are a tool to prepare students for the final assessment. Some people claim this to be “teaching to the test” as though this were an educational equivalent to a curse word. If you are one of those people who feel this way, read the argume...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Meet the Authors
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: What is a Short-Cycle Assessment?
• Part I An Introduction to Short-Cycle Assessments
• Part II Blueprints for the Process
• References