Taking ForI11ative

Douglas Fisher, Maria Grant, Nancy Frey,and Christine Johnson

When an urban high school embraced formative

assessments, teaching moved from weII­

intentioned guessworh to a finely-tuned dance.

Inrecent years, educators have

experienced much outside pressureto raise student achievement. To

avoid falling into reactive andsometimes prescriptive teaching

with prepackaged lessons, teachers andschools must increase the precision of our

teaching (Fullan, Hill, &: Crevola, 2006).This is where formative assessmentcomes in. Formative assessment strate­

gies-such as oral questioning, writingprompts, and tests (Fisher &: Frey,2007)-are essential if we are to develop

the detailed knowledge of students'

understandings and misunderstandingsnecessary to teach with precision.

Although educators have learned a lotabout good formative assessment inindividual classrooms, we wondered

what might happen if a school took the

process schoolwide. In 2001, through ajoint project between San Diego StateUniversity and the San Diego UnifiedSchool District, we set out to answer

this question. Hoover High School,an urban school of 2,300 students in

San Diego, California, with a highpercentage of low-income students andEnglish language learners, was our testsite.

The school arranged and paid for two

professors from San Diego State Univer-

sity (coauthors Douglas Fisher andNancy Frey) to teach part-time atHoover High for two years while collab­orating with teachers to embed a forma­tive assessment approach in the schoolculture. Teachers refined a process for

looking at student assessments collabo­ratively and using the information gath­ered to guide their instruction. Increating this process, we didn't wantteachers to simply give more assess­ments; we wanted them to see an imme­

diate value in the process. We learned alot from the work of Georgea Langerand her colleagues (Langer, Colton, &:Goff, 2003). But rather than offeringcommon formative assessments as an

option, as Langer's group did, we madedeveloping and using common assess­ments an expectation schoohvide.

We offer here the four-step process

we created for powerful schoolwideassessments at Hoover High as a modelfor others considering this approach.

Step 1: Developing Pacing GuidesEssential to this schoolwide process is

the weekly meeting of teachers incourse-alike groups rather than depart­ments (for example, all teachers

teaching Algebra I or world history). Asa beginning point, course-alike groups

develop common pacing guides. Pacingguides generally identify when theteacher will teach specific content stan­dards, which instructional materials are

appropriate, and what types of instruc­tional strategies teachers can deploy Inaddition to identifying these compo­nents, Hoover's pacing guides also indi­cate key vocabulary students will needto master in order to grasp coursecontent, which formative and summa­tive assessments teachers will use to

determine student understanding, andwhat accommodations are recom­

mended for students with disabilities,

English language learners, or studentsperforming above grade level.

64 EDUCATlONAL LEADERSHIP/DECEMBER 2007/jANUARY 2008

Assessment Schoolwide

Step 2: Designing CommonAssessments

In addition to choosing pacing guidesand corresponding summative assess­ments, teacher groups at Hoover

design, develop, or modify assessmentitems that every teacher will administerregularly throughout that course.Teachers develop these test items in

such a way as to provide informationthat will help them determine whatcontent students understand, where

students have gaps in comprehension,and who needs intervention. As groupsof teachers develop these assessmentitems, they learn more about theirstate's content standards and how those

standards might beassessed on state tests.

In addition, they plan

items that will signalwhen students are over­

generalizing, oversimpli­fying, or exhibitingcommon misunder­

standings. We learnedabout assessment designalong the way, learningfrom assessments wewrote that didn't work

and from professionaldevelopment seminarswe attended.

As part of designingcommon assessments to

use throughout the year,Hoover teachers gener­ally create somecommon formative

assessment items thatmirror the state test

design because theyknow that test format

practice is essential. Students mustunderstand tests as a genre-how theywork and what to expect. However,teachers do not limit items to those that

mirror the state test format: They alsoinclude short -answer, constructed­

response, and alternative-responseitems, as well as timed essays. We knowthat it's best to rely on a number of

strategies for determining students'understanding and that the key totaking formative assessments school­wide is ensuring that teachers can deter­mine "next steps" in instruction on thebasis of such assessments-which

requires more than practicing standard­ized questions.

Step 3: Conducting Item AnalysisTeachers in course-alike groups engagein the third step, analyzing the results,after all students in that course have

participated in a common formativeassessment. At Hoover, teachers useEdusoft, one of several commercial soft­

ware programs that provide an itemanalysis for each assessment and indi­

cate the percentage of students whoselected each of the answers. Other

powerful programs include Datawiseand Instructional Data ManagementSystem.

To avoid fallinginto prescriptive

teaching, teachersand schools must

increase the precision

of their teaching.

The item analysis is key to instruc­tional conversations and the interven­tions that flow from them because itenables teachers to look across the

student body for trends-content orconcepts they need to reteach, assess­

ment items they need to change, orpacing guides they need to revise.

Edusoft also enables teachers to analyzethe results of clusters of students, such

as exploring how English languagelearners as a group performed on aspecific item.

L

ASSOCIATION I'OR SUPERVISION AND CURRICLILLIM DEVEl.OPMENT 65

We didn't want teachers to simply givemore assessments; we wanted them to

see an immediate value in the process.

both parents (bb); a combination ofBb or

BBwould yield brown eyes.

Mr. Simms began the discussion:

MR. SIMMS:The greatest percentage ofstudents did choose the correct answer.

Question 3. In a(n) , all citizens at

mass meetings make decisions for the government.

Question 10. Use the map below to answer the following

question: Sparta is located of Athens.

FIGURE 1. Sample History Questionsand Student Answers

eyes (b). For this species, eye color doesnot depend on the sex of the organism.When a team of scientists crossed a male

and a female that both had brown eyes,they found that 31 offspring had browneyes and 9 had blue eyes. What are themost likely genotypes of the parentinsects?

Ms. GRANT:Maybe if we sharedthese results with students, it

would facilitate their thinkingabout the content. What if weshowed all students this item

analysis and asked them to workin small groups to determine whyspecific answers were wrong?

Ms. JACKSON:I also think we need

to work on test-taking skills. Ourstudents should have been able to

eliminate answers A and Brightaway because each shows aparent with blue eyes, and thequestion states that both parentshave brown eyes.

MR. SI~[MS:Twenty-six percent ofstudents chose answer D. Maybethey thought that since three outof four alleles are B, there's acorrelation to the 31 out of 40

total offspring with brown eyesdescribed in the question. I thinkI need to review how to use

Punnet's squares.

MR. SIMMS:Even though I covered themain concepts of Mendelian genetics, itseems that students didn't really under­stand how expressed traits are passedfrom parent to offspring.

Ms. JACKSON:Yes, but 54 percent didn'tchoose the right answer: 17 percent choseanswer A. This might mean that studentsdon't understand how a recessive trait is

passed on.

MRS.RODRIGUEZ:Yes, and II percentchose answer B. The students that chose

this answer don't understand the conceptof a dominant allele. Maybe I need tofocus more on vocabulary instruction forthis group of students. We covered thekey terms, but they don't seem to knowhow to use them. I think we should find

out the specific students who missed thisand get to them during small group time.

B.2%

D.30%

B. oligarchy

D. representative

democracy

B. northeast

D. southeast

B.3%

D.29%

A. BB and bbB. bb and bbC. Bb and BbD. BB andBb

Each answer shows the two alleles for

eye color of the male and female insect.The correct answer, which 46 percent ofthe students chose, is C because most of

the offspring have brown eyes but a few

have blue eyes. For an offspring to haveblue eyes, it must receive a b allele from

A. monarchyC. direct democracy

What students chose:

A. 7%

C. 61 % (correct answer)

A. northwest

C. southwest

What students chose:A.lO%

C. 58% (correct answer)In a certain species of insect,the allele for brown eyes (B) isdominant to the allele for blue

Uncovering Gaps inGenetics KnowledgeHoover science teacher Maria

Grant regularly facilitatesconversations about student

work. She and her colleaguesteaching 10th grade biologyrecently had the followingconversation about students'

understandings of geneticsconcepts while examiningstudents' responses to thisquestion on a common forma­tive assessment:

Step 4: Engaging inInstructional Conversation

The fourth step, instructional conversa­

tion, is why Hoover High teachers do allthis work. Talking with colleagues whoteach the same content and see the same

data results is foundational to instituting

improvements and helps teachers deter­mine which instructional strategies are

working, which materials are effective,and which students still need help tomaster the standards. Each course group

has a leader who receives professional

development in facilitation skills. Suchconversations enable teachers to returnto their individual classrooms and

engage in the real work of formativeassessments-to reteach and intervene

where students aren't doing well.Let's consider two fruitful

instructional conversations

observed recently at a regular

weekly meeting at Hoover.

66 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP/DECEMBER 2007/jANUARY 2008

How Students Scored in History

How Students Scored in Biology

2003 2005

Ms. Vasquez confessed, "I don't reallyknow how to teach this. I've shown mystudents the map and the directions. Idon't know what to do differently" Mrs.Johnson suggested to her, "I'll coveryour class so that you can go watch Mr.Applegate teach this concept. Is that

OK?" She then asked, "Does anyone elseneed help with teaching cardinalpoints?" Because many teachers wantedhelp, Mrs. Johnson recommended that

the group consider revising the course'spacing guide to allow more time toteach map skills.

As they continued to analyze theresults, the teachers also identified a

small group of students who had missedall the test items related to governmentstructures. They believed these learnerswould benefit from instruction to build

their background knowledge of suchstructures. Mr. Applegate offered tomeet with these students during theschool's after-school tutoring time.

Teachers also examined the students'self-assessments and determined a

correlation between accuracy and aresponse of "I knew it." Students whochecked the "I figured it out" indicatorwere also often accurate. The teachers

were pleased to see students using test­taking strategies of elimination andusing context clues.

Here we go again. Our students still don'thave a sense of the cardinal points. Wekeep asking questions that require themto use map skills, but they keep gettingthem wrong. Look here, just over 50percent correct. We have to focus oninterpreting maps every day It's not justabout using this for history and geog­raphy This is a life skill.

1%

18%

51%22%

8%

1%

1%

28%42%27%

20032005Advanced

0%3%Proficient

3%13%Basic

27%26%Below basic

24%27%Far below basic

46%31%

(n = 553)

AdvancedProficientBasicBelow basicFar below basic

(n = 333)

By the end of this conversation, theteachers decided to reteach some basic

concepts and show the students the

item analysis to focus them on thereasons for the correct and incorrectanswers.

Wouldn't that help them get test-formatpractice and also reinforce the biology?

Parsing MastcJY of a History Unit

Hoover's history teachers also analyzecommon formative assessments and

change their teaching strategies on thebasis of what they find. The departmentrecently piloted a metacognitive task incombination with a content assessment.

For each question students answered,they also indicated one of the followingfour descriptions of how they answered:

1 knew it, I figured it out, I guessed at it,or I don't care. During a discussion ofthis assessment, for the 9th grade courseFoundations of Democracy, teachersexamined a question that confused anumber of students (see fig. 1). Mr.Jacobs summarized the knowledge gapsthis question showed:

Let's start with Question 3. Only 61percent of the students got it right, andonly 38 percent of those who answeredcorrectly self-reported that they knew it.An additional 36 percent said they figuredit out, and 24 percent guessed at it. It'sinteresting that only 3 kids (of 241) didn'tcare about this question. 1 know that Itaught this. Most of the wrong answerswere still based on [students' under­

standing of] democracy, but not the righttype of democracy I think this could be aquick fix. We need to make sure thatstudents really have a sense of the differ­ence between direct and representativedemocracy I have an idea for a simulationthat could solidify this for students.

Mr. Jacobs described his idea for a

simulation, and the teachers agreed toreteach this concept. Mrs. Johnson thenturned their attention to Question 10:

Data reflect 10th grade scores onthe California Standards Test before

and after Hoover High implementedschoolwide formative assessment.

The Fruits of Precision Teaching

Although the joint action project withSan Diego State has ended, Hooverteachers continue to engage in somestep of this four-step process every

Asso CIATl 0 N FO R SUPE RVIS 10 N AN D CUR R I C UL U M DEVELOP MEN T 67

week, on the day students are releasedearly Hoover has experienced impres­

sive gains in student achievement sinceadopting formative assessment school­wide. As data shown in Figure 2 indi­cate, average student performance onthe California Standards Test in both

biology and history improved appre­ciably over the first two years thatHoover High has been involved in thisformative assessment process. In 2005,for example, 51 percent of Hoover's

10th graders scored at the basic level onthe California Standards Test in biology,compared with only 28 percent

achieving at the basic level in 2003 .Similarly, in 2005, 18 percent scored atthe proficient level on this test,compared with only 1 percent scoring atthe proficient level in 2003.

These changes came about because allHoover's teachers became more precisein their teaching. Collaborative itemanalyses and rich instructional conversa­tions based on these analyses, character­

ized by collegiality and respect, drovethese changes. The key to powerfulformative assessment, whether school­

wide or class-specific, is for teachers totake action as soon as they have infor­mation about what students do and

don't understand. With this key, we canall teach with precision. IS!

ReferencesFisher, D., &: Frey, N. (2007). Checkingfor

understanding: Formative assessment tech­

niques for your classroom. Alexandria, VA:Association for Supervision andCurriculum Development.

Fullan, M., Hill, P, &: Crevola, C. (2006).

Breakthrough. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin.

Langer, G. M., Colton, A. E., &: Goff, L. S.(2003). Collaborative analysis of student

work: Improving teaching and learning.

Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervi­sion and Curriculum Development.

Douglas Fisher (dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu)is Professor of Literacy and Nancy Frey(nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu) is AssociateProfessor of Literacy at San Diego StateUniversity in California. Maria Grant(mgrant@fullerton.edu) is currently Assis­tant Professor of Secondary Education atCalifornia State University in Fullerton;Christine Johnson (cjohnson@hshmc.org) is an educational consultant. Fisher

and Grant are authors of Better LearningThrough Structured Teaching: A Frame­work for Gradual Release of Resposibility(ASCD, in press).

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