Overview of Chapters
Chapter 1 offers foundational information to support readers’ understanding of collaborative common assessments. Chapter 2 introduces readers to research and evidence that show the benefits of collaborative common assessment systems, and sets the tone for the work that teams must do. Chapters 3–7 support teams in implementing and analyzing the collaborative common assessment process. Chapter 3 gives readers tools to navigate the preparation phase of collaborative common assessment work by attending to teamwork, unpacking standards, determining learning targets, and creating assessment road maps. Chapter 4 guides readers through design protocols for planning and writing collaborative common assessments. Chapter 5 focuses on the role of teachers’ instructional agility as they deliver common assessments in the classroom. Chapter 6 shows readers how to review data gleaned from assessments so they ensure all students continue learning. Chapter 7 explores how teams can plan reengagement opportunities after identifying student needs based on common assessment data. Finally, the epilogue offers a fictional story—based on the collaborative common assessment work from many different schools—illustrating how a cross-curricular team can engage in the work of using common assessments with critical competencies. While the story does not provide specifics of each phase, it is meant to provide creative approaches and plausible options regarding the challenges that most often stop a team from engaging in the work at all. It is also meant to reveal how fulfilling and exciting the work can be.
The chapters in this book offer protocols and tools identified as reproducibles so that teams can put them to immediate use. In most cases, the author developed the tools herein alongside teams to support their efforts; in a few cases, teams created the tools and shared them with the author in order to help others embarking in the work. Each chapter also ends with reflection questions that individuals, collaborative teams, and leadership teams can discuss as a means to gauge progress or reflect on general understandings. These questions focus teamwork and guide leadership teams in exploring key areas for decision making as they develop a schoolwide support system for their individual teachers and teams. Looking at the past or the present can always help to guide next steps. Ultimately, the questions are intended to help teams ponder key ideas from the chapter to help them move forward in their own collaborative common assessment efforts. Please accept the challenge to join the ranks of highly effective PLC schools and employ or customize the reproducible resources herein to support your collaborative efforts.
1
Understanding Collaborative Common Assessment
It’s critical that educators ensure every learner graduates prepared to thrive in the complex world that awaits. Toward that end, educators must vigilantly monitor the arc of learning over time. Checklists and tools for designing and monitoring standards, assessment, curriculum, and instruction are key. How do schools and districts equip teachers to harness the power of assessment while bringing joy and passion back to teaching? The answer lies in the collaborative common assessment process. When teacher teams properly design, deliver, and analyze collaborative common assessments, it helps teachers build instructional agility, the ability to quickly adjust instruction so it responds to learners’ needs. Done well, collaborative common assessments are the educators’ formative assessments; the resulting information from common assessments gives educators, like students, additional opportunities to improve their results over time.
As a summary to his meta-analysis of over eight hundred research studies in education, John Hattie (2012) provides a ringing endorsement of the power of common assessments to generate excellence in education when he concludes:
a major theme is when teachers meet to discuss, evaluate, and plan their teaching in light of the feedback evidence about the success or otherwise of their teaching strategies and conceptions about progress and appropriate challenge. This is not critical reflection, but critical reflection in light of evidence about their teaching. (p. 19)
Using such evidence can increase precision, flexibility, and responsiveness among teachers, making common assessments the vehicle for creating teachers who are instructionally agile and teams that are collectively efficacious.
As teams begin the journey of implementing the collaborative common assessment process, they will find it helpful to understand certain foundational concepts of the process. To begin, it’s important teams have a clear, working definition and established criteria for collaborative common assessments. Fortunately, there are many protocols and tools that can help teams determine whether they are meeting quality indicators for their work.
Defining Collaborative Common Assessments
Experts agree that common assessments yield data that educators can use to improve learning (Ainsworth & Viegut, 2006; Bailey & Jakicic, 2012; DuFour et al., 2016; Hattie, 2009; Reeves, 2006). Every author on this subject offers a slightly different definition of common assessments, but all authors—even those who do not classify themselves as professional learning community (PLC) experts—stick with the same theme; namely, common assessments provide the real-time evidence required for educators to reflect critically on their impact so they can then design targeted responses to move learning forward for their students (Ainsworth & Viegut, 2006; Bailey & Jakicic, 2012; DuFour et al., 2016; Hattie, 2009; Reeves, 2006).
The collaborative common assessment process puts educators in the driver’s seat and provides teachers with the necessary opportunity to assess according to their learners’ needs. The process needs to remain as close as possible to the classroom for teachers and their learners. When teachers reference their local classroom assessment results with their observations, experience, and curricular expertise, they tend to have a higher degree of clarity regarding what comes next in the learning for the students they serve. Likewise, schoolwide interventions can miss the mark if the classroom teacher’s concerns and insights are ignored. Teachers must drive the assessment and intervention decisions at the classroom level first.
A collaborative common assessment is any assessment that meets all five of the following criteria.
1. Formative or summative
2. Team created or team endorsed
3. Designed or approved in advance of instruction
4. Administered in close proximity by all instructors
5. Dependent on teamwork
Each of these criteria is integral to the collaborative common assessment process.
Formative or Summative
The goal of using formative assessments is to provide information that improves a learner’s ability to be successful, whereas the goal of using summative assessments is to prove a learner’s level of proficiency at the conclusion of the learning journey (Chappuis, Stiggins, Chappuis, & Arter, 2012; Erkens, Schimmer & Vagle, 2017, Wiliam 2011, 2018). Because both are necessary to support learning, common assessments should be both formative and summative in nature (Erkens, 2016). A team requires a common summative assessment (CSA) in order to ultimately certify mastery on a predetermined priority standard. If