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Have You Ever Wondered If Assessment and Accountability Are the Same Thing?
by the California Mathematics Council State Board
The
accountability movement in California has created a myriad of terms
that people often find confusing. If ever there was an area in
education that needs clarity it is that of assessment—especially as it
relates to accountability. With the advent of sanctions and rewards
based on the state’s accountability system, it is important to remind
ourselves of the original purpose of assessment. “We assess student
performance to improve education, determine success, and communicate
results” (Carr and Harris 2001, 64). Quite simply, assessment is a tool
to improve student learning and encompasses three broad stages:
pre-assessment, formative assessment, and summative assessment.
Informed educators use these to develop a comprehensive assessment
program to ensure the successful delivery of content to students
throughout the school year.
Pre-assessment
Pre-assessment identifies what the student
already knows and is able to do (Carr and Harris 2001, 64). “It is a
way to determine strengths and weaknesses in content oriented skills”
(Harris and Hodges 1995, 59). This type of assessment is also known as
diagnostic or entry level assessment. Informally, we have called this
process that of “identifying prior knowledge. ” The information gained
through pre-assessments is used in the development and implementation
of instructional units. There are a variety of ways that teachers
determine student ability:
- use of a diagnostic test appropriate to the content and standards that will be taught,
- use of a preliminary questioning process of students by teacher prior to a lesson,
- observation of students by teacher to determine readiness in an area, and
- use of past information on student performance.
Formative Assessment
Once the baseline of student ability has been determined, it is
time to use formative assessment. “Formative assessment provides
information throughout the teaching and learning process and guides
instructional decisions, time allocation, and selection of learning
tools and resources” (Carr and Harris 2001, 65). As educators we are in
need of constant feedback as we insure students are learning and
mastering the standards for the content we teach. If we cannot
continuously monitor student progress, some students will be left
behind while others could have been accelerated. Information gained
through formative assessments helps us determine when to use an
alternative approach, when to review previously learned material, when
to focus on skills in isolation, and when to use an activity to
synthesize learning.
The means for gathering this data can be informal or formal.
Informally, a teacher may learn about student progress through
observation, student interviews, reviewing homework, reading student
journals, and through student self- evaluation. Formal methods of
determining student progress may take the form of quizzes, tests with
selected response or open-ended questions, portfolios, essays, and/or
student presentations. Remember that the type of assessment used should
reflect the objectives being taught. While it is often easy to use the
end-of-chapter tests or publisher tests, it is only worthwhile to do so
if the test matches the standard that was taught. Overreliance on a
single type of formative assessment may give a compromised
understanding of student progress. As stated by the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics: “To make effective decisions, teachers should
look for convergence of evidence from different sources” (2000, 23).
Summative Assessment
At some point, it is time to determine how much of the information
students have learned. “Summative assessment is designed to provide an
evaluation summary” (Allen, Noel and Rienzi 2001, 5). “It is a snapshot
of student performance at a given point of time, judged to
pre-established standards and criteria. Summative assessment typically
leads to a status report on success or proficiency” (Carr and Harris
2001, 186). We often recognize this type of assessment as the end of
unit test or as a “final.” The most well known summative assessment in
California is the STAR program.
It is hard to believe that through this testing vehicle we have
moved from assessment of student knowledge to identification of “good”
and “bad” schools. Is it appropriate to use a single test to make this
type of determination? In every stage of assessment, educators are
encouraged to use a variety of measures to determine student ability
and progress-does it make sense to do otherwise for a statewide test
that has as its awesome responsibility the determination of whether
public education is providing quality instruction to all students? “By
failing to supplement standardized tests with richer, more meaningful
alternatives, we unwittingly invite our communities to use only test
scores to judge us” (Schmoker 1996, 70).
Currently schools have available a variety of data that could be
used to determine an effective school program: use of benchmark tests,
teachers’ records of results on their own formative and summative
assessments, student attendance, and graduation rates to name just a
few. If the intent of assessment becomes that of evaluating school
performance, then multiple measures must be used to justify the
conclusions (see the 5th article in this series, HYEWA5, Have
You Ever Wondered about The Use of Multiple Measures in
Mathematics, ComMuniCator, September 2002).
Assessment and Accountability
Accountability
is defined as “the idea that schools and teachers are responsible for
educational outcomes and should be evaluated, traditionally through
examination of students’ test scores” (Harris and Hodges 1995, 3).
Assessment focuses on improving instruction and reporting results of
that instruction. Assessment creates the justification for
accountability; therefore we must look at the full assessment
opportunities given to students. It is a fine line, but assessment and
accountability are not the same-they complement one another.
As
our state moves forward in refining the accountability system for
public education, the State Board of the California Mathematics Council
continues to recommend a comprehensive assessment program that uses
multiple measures to determine student progress. We also suggest
caution in policy development in the following areas: - High
stakes testing programs can lead to devastating decisions for students
that may jeopardize their progress in school. Retaining students or
denying access to courses based on the results of a single, summative
assessment is wrong.
- The identification of strong school
programs must be based on an in-depth and comprehensive look at
relevant data. It is wrong to use the results of a single, summative
assessment to target teachers and schools for sanctions.
Accountability
and assessment can work together to improve education for all students
in our state. Input from educators and parents is critical in this
process. Stakeholders need to be clear about the purpose of assessment
and how it can be used in its many forms and stages to show the
accountability we in education have to students and society.
Glossary of Terms
- Student Interviews: A written or spoken answer to a question.
- Open
Ended Question: A type of question used to explore a person's
understanding of what is read or heard and intended to produce a free
response rather than a directed one. A question that encourages
divergent rather than convergent thinking.
- Free Response Test:
A test in which one states answers in one's own words as in an essay
examination rather than by selecting a given response as in a
multiple-choice examination.
- Portfolio: A selected, usually chronological, collection of students’ work that may be used to evaluate the learning process.
References
Allen, M., R. Noel, and B. Rienzi. PACT Outcomes Assessment Handbook. California State University, Bakersfield, 2001.
Carr, J. and D. Harris. Succeeding with Standards. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001.
Harris, T. and R. Hodges. The Literacy Dictionary. International Reading Association, 1995.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, VA: The Council, 2000.
Schmoker, M. Results: the Key to Continuous Improvement. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1996.
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This Page was last updated: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 11:34:29 PM
This page was originally posted: 7/4/2003; 12:53:21 AM.
Copyright 2008 cmcmath
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