Assessment planning

September 9, 2009 by David Russell.

As I prepare for the upcoming school year and make the most of the extended summer, assessment is one of the first things I try to nail down.  Yesterday and today we have been analyzing student data from various tests with the most notable being CSAP and Edison Benchmark testing.  These two tests are quite interesting for both teachers and especially students to think about.  For students, if you watched the president’s speech yesterday I hope that you took it to heart and look forward to using school time and these assessments as opportunities to prove yourself.  For teachers, these tests represent a very crucial tool that so much resource is poured into and I feel that if 100% of our teachers took the time to truly reflect on what the results tell us, it would be powerful.  From all the Language Arts/English, Science, and Math teachers to the P.E., Fine Arts, Industrial Technology, and other “specials”, we need to all bring our focus to student achievement.

Teachers can do this.  Look at the strengths and weaknesses and focus on individual students(not percents) in our classes and look at what we do well then replicate it with all students.  The Benchmark testing has great potential due to being a formative assessment .  We will be able to use the results from each administration of the test to adjust instruction each month to fit the needs of our students.  All teachers should be looking at this formative data each month for each of their students.  This does not have to take a ton of time and should be viewed as a part of the lesson planning process.  An exciting development is the planned use of an ACT aligned Benchmark assessment.  The statistics I have seen showing how improvement on Benchmark testing translates into improved achievement on CSAP and ACT renews my enthusiasm for the use of all these assessments.

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