Transformative Assessment

Sarah CalvericSusan Combee

Hanover County Public Schools

Purpose

How do teachers’ assessment beliefs relate to their assessment

practices?

How can administrators effectively tackle the complicated topic of

assessment with educators?

Purposes for Assessments(Brown, 2004)

• Improvement of teaching and learning (formative view)

• Accountability of schools and teachers

• Certification of student’s learning (summative view)

• Assessment as irrelevant

Teachers’ Beliefs Regarding AssessmentGipps, et al. (1995) Hill (2000) Stamp (1987) Current assessment

terms

Intuitive Head note assessors

n/a Observation

Evidence gatherers Unit assessors Traditional, academic summative examination

Summative

Systematic Planners Integrated systematic assessors

Cater for need and progress for individual students

Formative

n/a n/a Assessment blocks teachers’ initiative

Irrelevant

Gipps, et al. (1995)

Intuitive Systematic planners

Evidence gatherers

Memory-reliant judgment processes

of assessing students’

performance intuitively without

written records

Systematic collection of multiple pieces of

evidence for the purpose of shaping

instruction and documenting

curriculum attainment

Collect written evidence usually at end of units to

demonstrate progress for the

purpose of accountability

Hill (2000)

Head note assessors

Integrated systematic assessors

Unit assessors

Rely heavily on their

observations and memory of students’

performance

Systematically plan and collect data for purpose

of recording progress and

making teaching improvements

Formally monitoring

student progress at the end of

each unit (school and student

accountability)

Stamp (1987)

Traditional-academic summative

examination

Assessment blocks teachers’ initiative

Cater for the need and progress for

individual students

Revolves around the use of test and

exams to collect summative information

(student accountability

conception)

Required but get in the way of

student creativity (irrelevance conception)

Use formative assessments to

identify individual student learning

needs (improvement

conception)

Practical Applications(Northwest Regional Educational Lab, 1998)

Standards-BasedAssessment-Nurturing

Learning

Integrating Assessment

with Instruction

Designing High

Quality AssessmentGrading and Reporting

– A Closer Look

Standards-Based Assessment-Nurturing Learning

Beginning with current thinking about standards-based instruction and the

role of ongoing assessment of student skills and knowledge to

inform practice

Integrating Assessment with Instruction

Assist in understanding the various ways that development and use of assessment

can affect and enhance instruction

Building the vision of how performance assessments can be useful instructional

tools if they are designed properly

Designing High Quality Assessments

What’s out there and how good is it?

What do good assessments look like?

Grading and Reporting- A Closer Look

Issues of why, whether, and how we should grade students

Other ways to report student progress besides grading

Transformative Assessment

• No single assessment approach can accomplish all of our goals. A balance must be built by carefully considering all the types of things to be assessed and the reasons to assess them and then choosing the assessment approach that best matches these targets and purposes. Sometimes the answer will be an alternative assessment, sometimes a traditional assessment, and sometimes a combination of the two.

~Northwest Regional Educational Lab (1998)

Contact Information

• Sarah Calveric, PrincipalCold Harbor Elementary Schoolscalveric@hcps.us

• Susan Combee, Assistant PrincipalCool Spring Elementary Schoolscombee@hcps.us