An added benefit to collaborative common assessments over individual classroom assessments is that teachers can generate program data during this phase. Classroom assessments by themselves do not offer great program improvement data because of the unlimited and unforeseen number of variables that may have contributed to the results, whereas common assessments limit some of the variables and provide comparative data. Data in isolation can only form experiences and frame opinions, but data in comparison create information. Figure 1.5 isolates the parts of the collaborative common assessment process that engage teachers in the data phase.
Figure 1.5: The collaborative common assessment data phase.
As teams tally, review, and explore the artifacts and results of their data, they search for key themes, repeating patterns, anomalies, or any other insightful components that will help them revise curriculum, instruction, and assessments as needed to make program improvements. At this juncture, teams use protocols, data templates, and student work to analyze data, conduct error analysis, and make strategic decisions about what comes next in their work.
The Re-Engagement Process
The design, delivery, and data phases are essential components of the collaborative common assessment process. The re-engagement process, however, is not guaranteed. In fact, if the collaborative common assessment process works as designed, few, if any, learners will require additional instruction. Ideally, there will be no need to re-engage learners in the learning following the initial instruction and summative assessments.
The work of responding with targeted re-engagement strategies is pictured in figure 1.6 as the smaller circle, which is a mirror image of the main circle comprising the design, delivery, and data phases.
Figure 1.6: The collaborative common assessment re-engagement cycle.
The re-engagement circle is smaller in size to represent the idea that fewer and fewer learners should require additional support, especially if the team worked collaboratively during the formative stages. The process is identical. Once teachers identify struggling learners, they must identify the targets that will require additional time and support, design the next assessments, create focused, alternate, and sometimes corrective instructional strategies and tools to address specific gaps in understanding, and reassess frequently to ensure mastery. The number of times that teams must repeat the re-engagement cycle varies. So much depends on the context: the rigor of the expectations, the background knowledge and skill of the learner, and the degree to which the mastery is imperative for the learner’s next steps.
Collaborative School Improvement
Healthy organizations are learning organizations; they tenaciously pursue their own internal brutal truths in an effort to attack problems and improve systems (Catmull & Wallace, 2014; DuFour et al., 2008; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006; Senge, 2006). When speaking of Pixar Animation Studios as a high-functioning and creative learning organization, cofounder Ed Catmull and author Amy Wallace (2014) note:
What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. (p. x)
Collaborative common assessments provide the data that help teachers, teaching teams, and even entire schools examine brutal truths so as to respond in creative and inspiring ways.
Moreover, collaborative common assessments provide the vehicle for implementing new initiatives. What is treasured is monitored, and what is monitored is implemented. When teams engage in the work of collaborative common assessments with regard to a new initiative or a new set of standards, they advance its implementation through monitoring outputs. To use collaborative common assessments successfully in the service of implementing new initiatives, teams must frontload their work with the right content, rather than spend endless energies on inputs that may or may not lead to accurate and sufficient outputs.
Educators rightly complain that the field is frenetic with testing for the sole purpose of monitoring progress or lack thereof. In fairness, high-stakes testing evolved in a vacuum of missing information. Education may be overtested, but it remains completely underassessed. As researcher, author, and recognized leader Douglas Reeves (2007) notes, “For too long, the siren song of ‘close the door and let me teach’ has led to a chasm between classroom practice and educational leadership” (p. 8). There are no industrywide standards that create consistent parameters or uniformly harness the power of classroom assessments to provide instructionally diagnostic information and meaningful achievement data.
The work of creating and employing collaborative common assessments cannot be about generating another set of high-stakes assessments that move closer and closer to the classroom. Instead, educators of all walks and roles must work together to redirect assessment to its “fundamental purpose: the improvement of student achievement, teaching practice, and leadership decision making” (Reeves, 2007, p. 1).
Collaborative common assessments should be based in the classroom, where the heart of learning and daily instructional decision making sits. They must generate accurate, helpful information that is immediately and collectively analyzed for the purposes of responding to results in meaningful, targeted, and agile ways. Essentially, collaborative common assessments serve as the engine to the work teams do to improve learning for learners and teachers alike. Team members must share in the design, delivery, and data analysis to maximize their professional learning and truly master their individual and collective craft knowledge.
2
Embedding Collaborative Common Assessments in a Balanced Assessment System
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
—Richard M. Nixon
The concept of collaborating sounds pleasant, but it takes considerable effort and commitment on behalf of the participants, and it can only happen when the assessments used to monitor results are carefully embedded in a healthy context and balanced assessment system. Engaging in collaborative common assessments requires systems thinking. When embedded and aligned to the greater context of classroom and district assessments, the common assessment process is guaranteed to intersect and impact classroom instruction, teamwork, school culture, and school improvement initiatives in parallel and positive ways. To maximize the potential of the common assessment process, educators must begin to think like architects with a deep understanding of all the systems involved.
Assessment Architects
Assessment is so much more than writing, employing, and then scoring a traditional test. There is a structure to the overarching system of individual assessment events or experiences. Educators must work as assessment architects—sometimes individually and sometimes in teams—as they structure learning progressions; select, modify, or create assessments; design accompanying tools and resources (rubrics, proficiency scales, protocols, templates, and so on); deliver assessments; score with accuracy and consistency; provide productive feedback; respond in instructionally agile ways; report results; and