ToolKit98

Toolkit98 Introduction

Tookit98 is about assessing student achievement. But, for the consortium of authors who developed Toolkit98, it's really about much more than that. It's about the vision of success we have for all students and how we'll know when we get there. It's about making students partners in the educational enterprise by clearly defining our expectations for performance and letting students in on them. It's about encouraging student self-reflection and self-assessment. It's about developing assessments that demand real intellectual quality while honoring student diversity. And, it's about assisting educators to create a view of assessment that supports instructors and classroom instruction. In short, it's about performance-based instruction and the central role of on-going student assessment to guide and invigorate practice.
All of this is easy to say, and it sounds good, but what does it really mean in practice? Well, we can't promise that we have all the answers-but, we do have a certain amount of knowledge and experience to share that illustrates the integration of assessment and instruction and the role of assessment in enhancing student achievement.

Who It's For

Toolkit98 is designed to assist classroom teachers to become better assessors of student learning. The primary users of Toolkit98 are intended to be those who have responsibility to coordinate and facilitate professional development in assessment for teachers.

Toolkit98 Goals

Specifically, the goals of Toolkit98 are to:
1. Provide practical support for quality assessment.
2. Provide background/foundation information on alternative assessment.
3. Provide information on the types of assessments that are being developed around the country and world and illustrate these variations with actual samples.

Definition

In Toolkit98, we use the following definition of alternative assessment:* Alternative assessment includes any type of assessment in which students create a response to a question rather than choose a response from a given list (e.g., multiple-choice, true/false, or matching). Alternative assessments can include short answer questions, essays, performances, oral presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions, and portfolios.*

Some people refer to this type of assessment as "constructed response."

4. Discuss the issues and considerations surrounding the development and use of alternative assessments so that educators become good consumers and users of current instruments and good developers of new assessments.
5. Emphasize the instructional potential as well as the monitoring functions of alternative assessment.
6. Assist users to develop a vision of what they want their assessments to look like and have reasons for these choices.
7. Provide professional development activities that allow educators to construct their own understandings of the nature and role of assessment in promoting, enhancing, and measuring student learning and achievement.
Although our emphasis is on assessment that takes place in the classroom, many of these topics are appropriate both for classroom assessment and for assessment that occurs across classrooms and throughout districts and states (large-scale assessment). We will note when a particular consideration or practice is more appropriate for large-scale or classroom assessment.
Even though in this document we emphasize alternative assessment, we do not want to imply that only alternative assessments are worthwhile and all previous assessment efforts are worthless. Actually, no single assessment approach can accomplish all 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 traditional assessment, and sometimes a combination of the two.

Toolkit98 Content

Toolkit98 includes two volumes. Volume One contains text and professional development training activities organized into four chapters:
Chapter 1: Standards-Based Assessment-Nurturing Learning. In this chapter we begin with current thinking about standards-based instruction and the role of ongoing assessment of student skills and knowledge to inform practice. Then we take a quick survey of what it means to assess well-high quality for all kinds of assessment from the classroom to the boardroom; from multiple-choice to portfolios. Along the way we visit the reasons that changes in assessment are taking place, discuss purposes of assessment, look at the need for clear student learning targets, and provide help with deciding when alternative assessment should be used.

Related Toolkit98 Chapters and Activities:
Activity Intro.1-Scavenger Hunt helps users become familiar with Toolkit98 format and content.

Chapter 2: Integrating Assessment With Instruction. The goal of this chapter is to assist the reader in understanding the various ways that development and use of assessment can affect and enhance instruction. The chapter includes building the vision of how performance assessments can be useful instructional tools if they are designed properly.
Chapter 3: Designing High Quality Assessments. What's out there and how good is it? This chapter provides a summary and analysis of current alternative assessment efforts and when to use various designs. No discussion of options would be complete without a look at quality-what do good assessments look like? So this chapter builds on the notions of quality from Chapter 1-this time focusing just on alternative assessments. The guidelines for high quality alternative assessments presented in the chapter can be used when developing or selecting assessments. Samples from real assessment instruments illustrate the points made.
Chapter 4: Grading and Reporting-A Closer Look. Grading and reporting are two issues that consistently recur in discussions of classroom assessment. This chapter discusses the issues of why, whether, and how we should grade students, and other ways to report student progress besides grades.
Each chapter has several parts:
A chapter introduction that includes goals for the chapter, an outline of chapter content, and an index of the professional development activities included in the chapter.
A written section ("Readings") that presents information on the concepts and ideas in the chapter. These can be used as background reading for you (the professional developer), or as handouts for training participants.
Associated professional development activities complete with presenter's outline, handouts, and hard copies of overheads.
Volume Two contains supplemental resource material needed for various training activities. It is packaged separately because the same material may be used for several different activities, and past toolkit users tell us it's easier to have it separate.
Appendix A-Alternative Assessment Sampler. Appendix A contains material from 48 different assessment projects. Samples cover all grade levels and several content areas-reading, writing, social studies, mathematics and science. All samples have copyright clearance to use in training.
Appendix B-Student Work Samples. Appendix B has samples of student responses to various performance assessment tasks. Several grade levels and subject areas are represented. All samples have copyright clearance to use in training.
Appendix C-Articles. Appendix C contains papers and articles about grading and reporting. All papers have copyright clearance to use in training.
Appendix D-Training Agenda Examples and Evaluation Forms. Appendix D includes sample training agendas that illustrate how various activities in Toolkit98 could be sequenced, along with sample Toolkit98 and training evaluation forms.
Appendix E-Glossary. This provides a list of assessment-related words and what they mean.

Use of Toolkit98

Reference Box-Related Products
The Promising Practices in Assessment Database is available on the Internet at: http://assessment.wested.org/ppad/. This website is a searchable database of assessment resources available from all the Regional Educational Laboratories.

Facilitating Systemic Change in Science and Mathematics: A Toolkit for Professional Developers (1995) is a set of learning activities that helps those supporting reform efforts deepen their knowledge about science and mathematics education, dissemination, professional development, and the change process. This resource was written by the Regional Educational Laboratories. Call your Regional Lab for information.

As the name implies, a toolkit contains a number of different tools that can be used to construct a multitude of products. The materials contained in Toolkit98: Alternative Assessment are like the hammers, saws, and screwdrivers of a carpenter's toolkit. They are mix and match; the user must choose the parts that will accomplish what is needed. When used creatively and with other necessary elements, the tools can build a useful and successful professional development experience. Toolkit98 is not, however, intended to be a complete textbook on assessment. Nor is it intended to provide all the necessary background and expertise to accomplish effective professional development in assessment; it is intended to complement, not substitute for, local professional development and assessment expertise. Although we try to present highly technical topics in simple and accessible ways, facilitators and trainers will need technical expertise and experience to address the multitude of questions that often arise during professional development activities.
And, although the professional development activities included in Toolkit98 are designed to model effective teaching strategies that incorporate what we know about sound instructional practices, they may need to be tailored to fit local situations. Purpose, setting, participants, time, and resource considerations will affect the actual planning and implementation of a professional development opportunity. So please feel free to modify exercises and activities to meet your own needs.

Of Footnotes, Headers, and Other Navigational Hints

There's a lot of material in Toolkit98. We've included some features to help users find what they want and then, when they're done, replace it where it goes. Here are some hints:
Tabs
In each chapter there is a tab that shows where the chapter itself begins and another one to show where the activities for that chapter begin. There are also tabs in the appendices at every fifth sample, so users don't have to dig through the whole stack to see where, for instance, sample 13 starts.
Footnotes and Page Numbering
Each chapter and activity is numbered separately. Thus, Chapter 1 text begins on page 1, but so do Activities 1.1, 1.2, …and so on. Reason-so we don't have to renumber everything anytime we want to add or change a single page. But, we have wonderful footers that will help you find what you want:
Toolkit98: Chapter X Text-Title page #
(e.g., Toolkit98: Chapter 3 Text-Designing High Quality Assessments 10)
Toolkit98: Chapter X Activity X.Y-Title page #
(e.g., Toolkit98: Chapter 4 Activity 4.1-Weighty Questions 1)
Toolkit98: Appendix Sample .Y-Title page #
(e.g., Toolkit98: Appendix B Sample B.1-Primary Writing 3)
Where: X = Chapter number (from 1 to 4)
Title = the title of the chapter, activity, or sample
= appendix letter
Y = the particular activity or sample number within a chapter or appendix
So, let's say that Activity 4.1 is removed for use. When done, the footer tells the user that the material belongs in Chapter 4 after the tab for "Activities"; and it's the first activity.
Icons and Sidebars

Related Toolkit98 Chapters and Activities:
Activities Intro.1-Toolkit98 Scavenger Hunt and Intro.2-Creating an Assessment Vision, Building Our Barn are included in this chapter.

1. To help users find activities that are related to topics addressed in the text of each chapter, we've added sidebars and an icon, like that to the right.
2. Instead of having endless lists of references at the end of each chapter, we have been selective, and those we cite are included as a sidebar in the text-for example, the reference box on page 5.
3. We've used sidebars when we want to make a point related to the text, but it might interfere with the overall flow. A sidebar is used also when we want to make sure something is seen-for example the definition on page 2.

What We've Learned. . . .

Toolkit98 is intended to assist users to design and develop professional development in assessment that engages participants in a practical hands-on fashion. We've learned a lot over the last 20 years about assessment training and promoting change. The list we humbly submit below probably matches up to your experience. We have attempted to design the Toolkit98 text and professional development activities to reflect this knowledge and experience.
The major thing we've learned is this:
If we can't demonstrate how changes in assessment will make teaching and/or student achievement faster, easier, and better, then we should not embark on teacher assessment training. Corollary: If we believe that assessment has power in the classroom, we ought to be ready to demonstrate it.
And now the rest of the list.

What we've learned. . . about assessment and its role in educational change. . .

Assessment, curriculum, and instruction must all be aligned with standards to have maximum impact.
Connectivity-everything (assessment, instruction, reform, content standards, the change process, etc.) is related to everything else, so sometimes it is difficult to know where best to start when we begin updating educational practice.

Related Toolkit98 Chapters and Activities:
Activity Intro.2-Creating an Assessment Vision: Building Our Barn assists users to place assessment in the context of systemic reform and change.

The process of changing educational practice is complex (because of it's interconnectedness), so everyone must merely…
....Start somewhere-take "baby steps" toward change.
Assessment is an excellent place to start because it tugs at issues that seem to be at the heart of current recommended changes in practice. Assessment is where the rubber meets the road, where we really define what we want students to know and be able to do regardless of what we say in our content and performance standards. Assessment is also a direct indicator of student success-and so can command resources.
It's best to start at the basic level with respect to assessment; few educators have had the opportunity to learn about assessment in a manner that is useful day to day in the classroom.
Assessments need a purposeful design to promote student success-good assessment involves more than just giving a test or collecting data.
Assessment is not a glamorous activity; it's hard, yet rewarding, work.
Assessment terms are used differently in different places. There is no universal agreement on the meaning of terms, so discussions can get confusing. Therefore, no one should claim to use the "right" definitions while everyone else uses the "wrong" definitions.

What we've learned . . . about professional development in assessment. . .

Professional development in assessment needs to be job-embedded and be undertaken with a long term commitment because assessment reform is like any other reform: all steps of the change process apply. Anyone who thinks that changing assessment will be a quick-fix for all educational woes is wrong. Therefore…
...One can't change beliefs and attitudes in a single workshop-teachers must go through the process. So…
...Professional development in assessment must be conceived of as more than a series of workshops (or worse yet, a single workshop). So…
...Training in assessment must be supported at all levels.
Merely changing assessment will not improve student learning. Teachers need to experience how changes in assessment relate to modifications in day-to-day instruction. So…
...Assessments must be designed to impact classroom practices and then teachers must come to their own understandings of what practices to change and how to change them.

What we've learned. . . about how adults learn. . . .

Teachers (and, indeed, all adults) learn the same way that students learn. They have a variety of learning styles, need to apply their knowledge to relevant real-life situations, need to practice with feedback, and proceed through a learning curve or developmental continuum.
The learning process is reiterative-there is always more to learn.
The learning process must promote understanding. Plans that call for providing teachers with canned materials will not promote meaningful change. Teachers need to know, understand, and embrace suggested changes, not blindly use things they don't understand or deem important.
What we are saying is that the steps involved in changing assessment practice are not new. Any type of change is hard, and planning is vital. Schools and districts that are successful over the long term are those that have taken the time to talk, plan, and consider many of the components listed above. In other words, they have a vision for success and a carefully thought out, purposeful plan for achieving it.

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