This document discusses different types of assessments and their purposes. It outlines how formative assessments, like daily checks for understanding, are more useful for informing instruction compared to annual high-stakes tests. The document advocates for using common assessments in data teams to analyze student work, identify strengths and weaknesses, and determine best practices. It emphasizes that effective data teams regularly examine student data, evaluate instruction, set goals, and use teacher needs to guide improvement efforts.

1. Pathway to Learning
Philosophy of Assessment
Vern Mills
Ed Psych 510

2. ESEA of 1965
• Push towards High stakes Assessments
– ITBS
– CTBS
– WASL
– MSP
– SBAC
 “Good Schools” vs. “Under Performing School”
 You did well, or ….
 Is an assessment once a year really an effective
measure of what students really learned?

3. Assessments along the way
• Tests for Grades
– Weekly tests
– Spelling tests
– Math tests
– Unit tests
If we don’t assess how can we grade?

4. Assessments For Services
• Cognitive Assessments
• Academic Assessments
• Specific Services OT,PT, SLP
• Qualify you into or out of services

5. The Cycle of Learning adapted from Papham
Instruction
Content
Assessment
Decisions

6. Summative Assessments
• Unit tests
• Semester tests
• End of Course tests
• It’s Data, but can it really help me in the here
and now?

7. Formative Assessments: The Real
Work of Teachers
• Formative assessments inform our instruction
daily- tasting the soup vs. eating the soup
• Can help in the middle of a lesson, thumbs
up/down
• Entry/exit tasks, do they remember, do they
understand
• Quickly accessible data that we can use to
differentiate instruction in the here and now to
improve our practice as well as student learning.

8. Formative Assessments: The Real
Work of Teachers
• Measures of Academic Progress – Vertically
aligned assessment.
• Review of previously taught material. Do they
still have it?
• Common Assessments- Where the real work
begins!
• Use of the Common Assessments in a Data
teams to look at specific skills and specific
students and best practices.

9. Where are you?

10. Non-negotiatables
• Data, Data, Data!
• Use of a specific template to guide our meetings.
• Expectation that student work will be presented and
used.
• Teachers bring data.
• What did we do differently? What can I do to improve
my instruction?
• Creation of SMART goals.
• Let the teacher needs guide the work in the meeting if
it is moving us down the road of improvement as a
team.

11. Lean on Me
• Data team meetings set up in advance.
• There will be a template or format for the
meeting to help guide our process.
• Plans made and followed through on.
• I will be part of the team, not a bystander.
• I am a resource to assist you in finding what
you need! I will beg, borrow or steal what you
need if you think it will help.

12. Skills vs. Growth
Skills Growth
Student Growth Percentiles are each
students individual pathway to
success!
Strategically picking individual
students or groups of students that are
close to making that next level.
Also keeping an eye on those students
that made very little growth when
compared to their peers with the same
score the previous year.

13. Reality isn’t always easy,
But it sure feels great when you get
there!