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EL
EDUCATIONAL
LEADERSHIP Using
Assessments
Thoughtfully

MARCH 2014
VOL. 71 NO. 6 • $8.95
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 EDUCATIONAL

EL LEADERSHIP
M a r c h 2 0 1 4 . Vo l u m e 7 1 . N u m b e r 6

Using Assessments Thoughtfully

| features | 28 Formative Assessment

in Seven Good Moves
Brent Duckor
10 The Bridge Between Today’s From priming students to probing their
Lesson and Tomorrow’s responses—these practices make a difference in
Carol Ann Tomlinson student outcomes.
Ten principles for using formative assessments
wisely. 34 New Assessments,
New Rigor
16 The Right Questions, Joan Herman and Robert Linn
The Right Way An inside look at the difficulty levels
Dylan Wiliam of the new standards.
“No hands up” and other ideas to help you
elicit evidence of students’ thinking. 39 Student-Owned Homework
Cathy Vatterott
20 Thoughtful Assessment New homework practices reinforce the mind-set
with the Learner in Mind that persistence is part of learning.
Jan Chappuis
If we believe we can address the issue of rigor 44 The Problem with Penalties
by simply giving rigorous assessments, we’ve Myron Dueck
missed the point.
Ways to deal with late and incomplete work.

20 50 How We Drive Students

to Cheat
Cris Tovani
We need to let kids know we expect more than
regurgitated answers.

57 The Common Core

Assessments: What You
Need to Know
Nancy Doorey
Some answers about when and how new
assessments will be implemented.
 | columns |
Perspectives
7 The Assessor’s Art
Marge Scherer
Listen online at www.ascd.org/el.

Research Says
78 Better Tests Don’t Guarantee Better Instruction
Bryan Goodwin
High-stakes testing pressure skews the validity of tests.

Art and Science of Teaching

82 Using Polling Technologies
to Close Feedback Gaps
Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano
68 Clickers and free online resources speed up lag time
between student responses and teacher feedback.
62 Criterion-Referenced
Power Up!
Measurement: Half a
Century Wasted? 85 Open Educational Resources:
On the Web and Free
W. James Popham
Doug Johnson
To realize the promise of a revolutionary
measurement strategy, we must avoid It’s the right time to start curating a wealth of free resources.
four misuses.
Principal Connection
88 Service Vs. Hospitality
68 Are Our Kids Ready
Thomas R. Hoerr
for Computerized Tests? What a school leader can learn from a restaurateur.
Kristine Gullen
What makes taking tests online confusing? One to Grow On
Some surprising answers from the kids who’ve
taken pilot tests.
90 The Principal in the Hallway
Carol Ann Tomlinson
Commentary Talking to passers-by can be central to leadership.
73 Personalization: It’s Anything
But Personal | departments |
Maja Wilson
Are customized coffees and music choices 8 Double Take
really personal? And do we want that kind
of personalization at school? 83 Index to Advertisers

Tell Me About…
92 The Most Effective Assessment You Have Used
28
95 ASCD Community in Action

EL Takeaways
96 Eight Takes on Thoughtful Assessment

Cover: © Gwenda Kaczor

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 EL Extending Our Theme Online
When Students Lead Their Learning Find Us Online
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 We offer professional development that
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Perspectives
I
n his poem “Revelation,” Robert
Frost talks about the tendency of
humans to hide their true identity
from others while at the same time
hoping that someone will find them
out. He counsels, “Those who hide too
well away must speak and tell us where
they are.” In a poem about everything
from faith to love, Frost is probably not
talking about formative assessment.
But he might be, it seems
to me. If only students
would—or could—“tell
us where they are.” In the
absence of such revelation,
the teacher has to practice
the assessor’s art: find out
what students know and
can do—and lead each to
the next upward step.
Unlike high-stakes
testing—which is used
for so many quasi-instructional and
contradictory purposes—formative
assessment primarily has a strategic
instructional purpose. Formative
assessment is an ongoing conversation
between teacher and students, Carol
Ann Tomlinson (p. 10) explains. It
is also “the bridge between today’s
lessons and tomorrow’s.” In formative
assessment, teachers, like detectives,
look for clues about students’ learning
progress. Like doctors, they use diag-
nostic tests and examine suitable
treatment options. Keen observers,
they watch what students do, and they
devise multiple indirect and direct
ways to gather input from them about
their thinking. They analyze all this
assessment information to show stu-
dents where they are in relation to skills
and understandings they need, and to
design instruction that fits.
In this issue of Educational
Leadership, authors discuss multiple
Click the icon to listen to the podcast.
The Assessor’s Art
strategies that educators can use to
plan such a teaching practice.
Assessment specialist Jan Chappuis
(p. 20) recommends constructing
assessment questions that have
“instructional traction”: questions that
can uncover kids’ logic, discover what
they know and don’t know, and probe
for misunderstandings and miscon-
ceived notions. Dylan Wiliam (p. 16)
and Brent Duckor (p. 28)
advise how to further
learning by phrasing ques-
tions that can be answered
at a number of different
levels and calling on stu-
dents in such a way as to
make sure you are hearing
from them all. Other authors
describe how to make
homework more effective;
give actionable feedback;
and use quick checks, exit slips, pacing,
and wait time (pp. 39, 44, 50).
In this transitional time before the
Common Core assessments are imple-
mented, schools are struggling to get
their kids and themselves ready. Some
are frantically giving many more non-
required interim tests to prepare stu-
dents for the high-stakes tests; others
are studying the standards and over-
hauling their curriculum. These steps
may be necessary, but a number of
school chiefs are calling for a more
thoughtful, slower pace. The assess-
ments must be fully put into place and
the results must first produce valid
and reliable data before policymakers
decide to extend their use for teacher
and principal accountability measures,
they note.1 In his research column this
month, Bryan Goodwin (p. 78) also
urges caution. He cites Campbell’s
law: The higher the stakes attached
to any measure, the less valid that
measure becomes. Primarily this is so
because the pressure of high stakes
leads to teaching to the test and over-
emphasizing test scores.
In a recent research report from
Stanford University,2 Linda Darling-
Hammond and Frank Adamson
express the hope that the quality of
standardized assessments will improve
substantially if the Common Core con-
sortia live up to their claims. But they
also suggest that educators need to be
more involved in developing assess-
ments and learning how to use them.
Students will reap double benefits if
assessment becomes less about the
numbers and more about discerning
where students are in their learning and
then planning lessons accordingly.
From building relationships to
delivering a lesson that is challenging,
engaging, and, sometimes, entertaining,
teaching is very much a performance
art that must be practiced on one’s feet.
Formative assessment presents another
challenge—and requires sophisti-
cated but quieter skills: observation,
questioning, reflection. Teachers’
daily ongoing practice puts the pieces
together—and this practice has more
potential to improve learning than all
the high-stakes tests put together. It’s
no revelation, but something we have
known all along.
1
Strauss, V. (2014, January 31). Slow
down reforms, say school chiefs in
Maryland. The Washington Post. pp. B1–2.
2
Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson,
F. (2013). Developing assessments of deeper
learning: The costs and benefits of using
tests that help students learn. Stanford, CA:
Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in
Education.
—Marge Scherer
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 7
DoubleTake
DoubleTake
Research Alert
Testing, Testing
Has testing spiraled out of control in the 11 percent of per-pupil expenditures in the
United States? According to one study, typical state).
it has. Researchers looked at the Q If testing were abandoned alto-
assessment inventories and testing gether, one school district in this
calendars of two midsize school study could add 20–40 minutes
districts. Here are some of their of instructional time to each
findings: day, whereas the other could
Q Students in heavily tested add almost an entire class
grades spend between 20 and period to each day for grades
50 hours annually taking 6–11.
tests. The study notes that these
Q Students in high-stakes are “conservative estimates.”
testing grades spend between Excluded were such items as
60 and 110 hours annually the cost of test-prep materials
in test preparation—that is, and the costs associated with
taking practice tests and learning lost services from teachers who
test-taking strategies. (One are assigned to administer the
hundred and ten hours equal one tests.
full month of school.) Authored by Howard Nelson and
Q Including the cost of lost instruc- published by the American Federation of
tional time, the estimated annual testing cost Teachers, Testing More, Teaching Less: What
per pupil in grades that had the most testing ranged from America’s Obsession with Student Testing Costs in Money
$700 (approximately 7 percent of per-pupil expenditures and Lost Instructional Time is available at www.aft.org/pdfs/
in the typical state) to more than $1,000 (approximately teachers/testingmore2013.pdf.
© KZENON/SHUTTERSTOCK

Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History

Relevant Reads by William J. Reese (Harvard University Press, 2013)

Prominent educators decry the testing mania
that has gripped U.S. schools. “School admin-
istrators spend countless hours preparing tests,
calculating numbers, and compiling tables to
track the academic progress of students and to
hold teachers accountable. . . . Teachers drill,
cram, and coach their students, telling them to
love knowledge for its own sake while dutifully
recording marks and percentages for report
cards and posterity” (p. 2).
Sound like an apt description of the assessment
picture in education today? In fact, this is how
William J. Reese describes schools of the late
1800s, when an “education revolution” ushered
in the ubiquitous uses of written examinations
as part of a new era of standardization, scien-
tific management, and governance by experts.
Readers will find that this informative history
puts contemporary battles over standardized
assessments into perspective.

8 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

 Online Only

Assessing ELLs
How can educators effectively and fairly assess English
language learners (ELLs)? ¡Colorín Colorado! (www
.colorincolorado.org) has a plethora of tools for monitoring
students’ language skills, a how-to on doing informal
assessment with ELLs, and resources on ELLs and writing
assessment. Two videos feature experts discussing topics

© ANDRESR/SHUTTERSTOCK
that range from performance-based assessment to ELLs
and the Common Core State Standards. (Go to the section
on “Common Core and ELLs” for more specifics on this
topic.) Also featured are research reports, selected books
on ELLs and assessment, and a free Parents’ Guide to State
Testing (in both English and Spanish). (www.colorincolorado.org/policy/issues/assessment) or the
For information on national and state policies related Interactive Web Resources Map (www.colorincolorado
to ELLs, standardized testing, and accommodations, visit .org/web_resources/by_state), which lets users zero in on
the Policy Issues: Assessment and Accountability section information about ELLs and testing within their state.

World Spin

Numbers of Note So Who’s Tech-Savvy?

25
In Sweden, young adults ages 16–24 topped the charts in
The number of U.S. states
an assessment of technology skills that was administered
that require students
in 19 countries. Participants were asked to perform tasks
to pass an exit exam
at three levels of difficulty: to sort e-mails into folders,
to obtain a high school
organize data into a spreadsheet, and manage reservations
diploma.
for a virtual meeting room. Fewer than one-third of U.S.

16
young adults could complete tasks more complicated than
The number of U.S.
sorting e-mails, a performance that put them at the bottom
states giving high school
of the list of performers from the 19 countries. The study
exit exams that plan
underscored the need for equality of access to technology
to replace this exam
because major discrepancies were noted among the results
with an assessment
for young adults from varying socioeconomic backgrounds.
by the Partnership for
Assessment of Read-
iness for College and
Careers (PARCC) or
© WAVEBREAKMEDIA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Smarter Balanced.

Source: Center on Education Policy. (2011). State high school

tests: Changes in state policies and the impact of the college and
career readiness movement. Washington, DC: Author.

PageTurner

Watching the crowd, I was fascinated by a toddler who was learning to walk.
He was propelling himself along as if he were rowing a boat. His parents watched
with delight. No one said, “Bad baby, you’re not doing it right!” —Cathy Vatterott, p. 38

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG
 The Bridge
Today’s Lesson
Between
and Tomorrow’s
Formative assessments can improve both teaching
and learning, if you follow these ten principles.
Carol Ann Tomlinson
T
here’s talk aplenty in schools these days
about formative assessment. That’s encour-
aging, because formative assessment has
great potential to improve both teaching
and learning. Listening to the conversations
sometimes, however, reminds me that it’s easier to sub-
scribe to a word than to live out its fundamental tenets.
I see formative assessment as an ongoing exchange
between a teacher and his or her students designed
to help students grow as vigorously as possible and to
help teachers contribute to that growth as fully as pos-
sible. When I hear formative assessment reduced to a
mechanism for raising end-of-year-test scores, it makes
me fear that we might reduce teaching and learning to
that same level.
Formative assessment is—or should be—the bridge
or causeway between today’s lesson and tomorrow’s.
Both its alignment with current content goals and its
immediacy in providing insight about student under-
standing are crucial to helping teacher and student see
how to make near-term adjustments so the progression
of learning can proceed as it should. I worry when I hear
educators say they have purchased formative assess-
ments to give once a quarter or once a month to keep
tabs on student achievement. These assessments are
not likely to be well aligned with tomorrow’s lesson,
© DAN PAGE/THEiSPOT
nor are they able to provide feedback rapidly enough to
influence daily instruction.
The best teachers work persistently to benefit the
learners in their charge. Because teaching is too complex
to invite perfection, even the best teachers will miss the
mark on some days, but in general, teachers who use
sound formative assessment aspire to the following 10
principles.
1 Help students understand the role of
formative assessment.
Students often feel that assessment equals test equals
grade equals judgment. That association leads many dis-
couraged students to give up rather than to risk another
failure. It causes many high-achieving students to focus
on grades rather than learning, and on safe answers
rather than thoughtful ones.
It’s important, then, for teachers to help students
understand that assessments help them learn and that
immediate perfection should not be their goal. Teachers
can communicate this message by telling students,
When we’re mastering new things, it’s important to feel safe
making mistakes. Mistakes are how we figure out how to
get better at what we are doing. They help us understand
our thinking. Therefore, many assessments in this class
will not be graded. We’ll analyze the assessments so we can
make improvements in our work, but they won’t go into the
grade book. When you’ve had time to practice, then we’ll
talk about tests and grades.
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 11
 It’s essential for teachers to help
learners both understand and expe-
rience the reality that sustained effort
and mindful attention to progress
feed success. That belief needs to be a
cornerstone ethic in the classroom.
2 Begin with clear KUDs.
The first step in creating a worthy for-
mative assessment occurs well before
the teacher develops the assessment.
It happens when the teacher begins
to map out curriculum. At that point,
the teacher asks the pivotal question,
“What is most important for stu-
dents to Know, Understand, and be
able to Do as a result of this segment
of learning?” Absent clarity on the
essential knowledge, understanding,
and skills for a unit or lesson, the
curriculum wanders. But with clarity
about KUDs, the teacher is able to
focus curricular decisions squarely on
what matters most for student success.
KUDs also lay the groundwork
for pre-assessment and ongoing
assessment. A pre-assessment provides
a “dipstick check” of student status as
a unit begins. It need not be wholly
comprehensive, but rather should
sample student standing in relation
to the material so the teacher has a
reasonable approximation of who
may experience difficulty, who may
show early mastery, and who may
bring misunderstandings to the unit
of study. Other formative assessments
will follow regularly and often, and
together they will form an image of a
student’s emergent development.
Alignment between KUDs and
formative assessments—and later,
between formative assessment results
and instructional plans—is imperative
if formative assessment is to fulfill its
promise.
3 Make room for student
differences.
The most useful formative assess-
ments make it possible for students
to show what they know, understand,
12 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
and can do; therefore, it’s useful for
teachers to build some flexibility into
formative assessments. For example,
a student who is learning English may
be able to draw and label a diagram of
the relationship between density and
buoyancy but not write a paragraph
explaining it. The prompt, “Use an
example from your experience to illus-
trate the idea that a person’s culture
shapes his or her perspective,” is more
likely to draw a meaningful response
Formative assessment
is a means to
instruction that’s
a better fit for
student needs, not
an end in itself.
from a broader range of students than
the prompt, “Explain the relationship
between culture and perspective.”
Likewise, asking students to illus-
trate how fractions are used in sports,
music, cooking, shopping, building
something, or another area they are
interested in is more likely to be
revealing than asking them simply to
explain uses of fractions.
In formative assessments (as in
summative ones), it’s acceptable—and
often wise—to allow students some
latitude in how they express what
they know, understand, and can do.
Assessment formats and conditions
can vary as long as all forms of the
assessment measure the same KUDs.
4 Provide instructive feedback.
Although formative assessments
should rarely be graded, students do
need useful feedback. Comments like,
“Nice job,” “I enjoyed this,” or “Not
quite” don’t help learners understand
what they did well or how they missed
the mark. Feedback needs to help the
student know what to do to improve
the next time around. For example,
it’s helpful for a teacher to say, “The
flow of your logic in this section is
clear, but you need additional detail
to support your thinking.” It offers a
student little guidance if the teacher
simply says, “Not quite there yet,” or
“Weak effort.”
When feedback serves its instruc-
tional purpose, students are clear
about the learning targets at which
they are aiming, and they understand
that assessments show how they are
doing in reaching those targets. They
trust that teachers will use the assess-
ments to help them achieve, and
they know that there will soon be
follow-up opportunities for them to
use the feedback in improving their
performance.
5 Make feedback user-friendly.
Feedback should be clear, focused,
and appropriately challenging for the
learner. As teachers, we sometimes
feel our job is to mark every error on
a paper. Not only is that practice time-
consuming, robbing us of time we
could more potently use for instruc-
tional planning, but a sea of “edits”
without clarity about which comments
matter most, how they connect, or
what to do next is likely to evoke a
negative response from a student.
To realize its power, feedback must
result in a student thinking about
how to improve—the ideal is to elicit
a cognitive response from the learner,
not an emotional one (Wiliam, 2011).
It’s seldom useful to send students a
message that their work is stellar or
that their work is dreadful. Praise and
shame shut down learning far more
often than they catalyze it. It’s more
fruitful to straightforwardly share with
students their particular next steps in
the learning process, based on goals
that are clear to teacher and student
alike. The teacher sees where a student
is in a learning progression and points
the way ahead for that student. In
other words, feedback is differentiated,
pointing each learner toward actions
that are challenging but achievable for
that learner.
For example, a teacher who is
working with students on using
sources to support an opinion pro-
vides criteria for the effective use of
resources for this purpose. In writing
an opinion piece, some students may
have difficulty synthesizing ideas from
multiple resources. A second group of
students may synthesize proficiently
but rely solely on obvious interpre-
tations of text. To move ahead, the
first group of students needs specific
guidance on how to synthesize ideas
from resources. The second group
needs direction in plumbing ideas
more deeply. Both groups will receive
feedback in the area of using resources
to support an opinion, but their
feedback will focus on aspects of the
skill set that move them to their next
step in development.
6 Assess persistently.
Formative assessment should per-
meate a class period. A great teacher
is a habitual student of his or her stu-
dents. A keen observer, the teacher is
constantly watching what students do,
looking for clues about their learning
progress, and asking for input from
students about their status.
These teachers walk among their
students as they work, listening for
clues about their understanding,
asking questions that probe their
thinking, taking notes on what they
see and hear. They ask students
to signal their level of confidence
with the task they are doing with
thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-
sideways, for example, to gain a sense
of how the class as a whole is faring.
They ask students to write answers
to questions on whiteboards or to
respond with clickers so they can get
an in-process sense of how individual
students are coming along.
To realize its power, feedback must result in
a student thinking about how to improve.
They use start-up prompts to see
what students learned from last night’s
homework. They use exit cards to
assess student understanding as a class
ends. They spot-check student work
with an eye to seeing how students
are progressing with a particular skill.
They talk with students as they enter
and leave the classroom, at lunch, or
while waiting for the school buses
to leave. They solicit and are alert
to parent input about their students’
strengths, attitudes, work habits, and
goals.
It isn’t really so much that these
teachers use formative assessments
often. It’s that they do so continually—
formally and informally, with
individuals and with the group, to
understand academic progress and
to understand the human beings that
they teach. For these teachers, for-
mative assessment is not ancillary to
effective teaching. It is the core of their
professional work.
7 Engage students
with formative assessment.
Time was when doctors examined
patients, made diagnoses, and pro-
vided treatment plans with limited
© RICHARD MIA/THEiSPOT
conversation about their observations
or alternative courses of treatment.
More recently, physicians have learned
that outcomes improve when patients
and doctors exchange information and
examine treatment options together.
It’s easy for teachers to stick with
the traditional classroom paradigm
that casts them in the role of giver and
grader of tests, diagnoser of student
needs, and prescriber of regimens.
Things go much better, however,
when students are fully engaged in the
assessment process.
Students benefit from examining
their own work in light of rubrics
that align tightly with content goals
and point toward quality of content,
process, and product—or in com-
parison to models of high-quality work
that are just a bit above the student’s
current level of performance. They
benefit from providing feedback on
peers’ work, as long as the feedback is
guided by clear criteria and a process
that enables them to provide useful
suggestions.
Students also need to be involved
in thoughtfully examining teacher
feedback, asking questions when
the feedback is not clear, and
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 13
developing plans that specify how they
will use that feedback to benefit their
own academic growth. Students who
are consistent participants in the for-
mative assessment process should be
able to say something like this:
Here are four goals I’m working on
right now. In this piece of work, here’s
evidence that I’m competent with the
first and third goals. If we look at my
work from a month ago and then at this
most recent piece, I can show you evi-
dence of my progress with the second
goal. I can also tell you two things I’m
going to work on this week to make
sure I become more confident and more
skilled in working with the fourth goal.
8 Look for patterns.
The goal of reviewing formative
assessment is not to be able to say,
“Six students made As, seven made
Bs, ten made Cs, and so on.” Neither
is the goal to create 32 lesson plans
for 32 students. Rather, it is to find
patterns in the students’ work that
point the way to planning classroom
instruction that both moves students
along a learning continuum and is
manageable.
Patterns will vary widely with
the focus of the assessment. In one
instance, a teacher may see some
students who have already mastered
the content, others who are fine with
computations but not word problems,
still others who know how to tackle
the word problems but are making
careless errors, and another group
that is struggling with prerequisite
knowledge or skills.
In another instance, a teacher may
find that one group of students can
provide causes of an event but no
evidence for their reasoning, while
other students are able to provide both
causes and evidence. In still another
case, a teacher may see students who
understand the general idea being
assessed but lack academic vocabulary
to write with precision, while other
students are using appropriate aca-
demic vocabulary. The possibilities
14 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
are many, but the goal is to look for
clusters of student need and plan ways
to help each group of students move
ahead.
9 Plan instruction around
content requirements and
student needs.
There is little point in spending time
on formative assessment unless it
leads to modification of teaching
and learning plans. In other words,
formative assessment is a means to
design instruction that’s a better fit for
student needs, not an end in itself.
Formative assessment
is more habitual than
occasional in classrooms
where maximizing
each student’s growth
is a central goal.
On rare occasions, formative
assessment will indicate that everyone
in the class needs more practice with
a certain skill or more engagement
with a particular understanding. Much
more frequently, however, formative
assessment points to a need for dif-
ferentiated instruction during at least
some of an upcoming class period, in
homework, or in both. John Hattie
(2012) says that
teachers must know where students are
and aim to move them “+1” beyond that
point; thus the idea of teaching the class
as a whole is unlikely to pitch the lesson
correctly for all students. This is where
the skill of teachers in knowing the sim-
ilarities across students and allowing for
the differences becomes so important.
(p. 97)
An assessment is really only a for-
mative assessment when teachers
glean evidence about student per-
formance, interpret that evidence,
and use it to provide teaching that is
more likely to benefit student learning
than the instruction those teachers
would have delivered if they had con-
tinued forward without using what
they learned through the assessment
(Wiliam, 2011).
10 Repeat the process.
Formative assessment is more habitual
than occasional in classrooms where
maximizing each student’s growth is a
central goal. In such classes, it simply
makes no sense to teach without
a clear understanding of each stu-
dent’s development along a learning
trajectory. It is wasteful of time,
resources, and learner potential not to
make instructional plans based on that
understanding. Assessment of each
learning experience informs plans for
the next learning experience. Such an
assessment process never ends.
A classroom is a system with inter-
dependent parts—each affecting the
other for better or worse. The learning
environment, quality of curriculum,
use of formative assessment, instruc-
tional planning, and implementation
of classroom routines work together to
enhance student learning—or, if any
of the elements does not function
effectively, to impede it. Fruitful use of
formative assessment is an essential
component in the mix. EL
References
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for
teachers: Maximizing impact on learning.
New York: Routledge.
Wiliam, D., (2011). Embedded formative
assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution
Tree.
Carol Ann Tomlinson (cat3y@virginia
.edu) is William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor
and Chair of Educational Leadership,
Foundation, and Policy at the Curry
School of Education at the University
of Virginia in Charlottesville. She is
the author, with Tonya R. Moon, of
Assessment and Student Success in a
Differentiated Classroom (ASCD, 2013).
 Core Assessments
That Enhance Learning
Get Common Core-Aligned
Assessment Tasks and Rubrics
Bring learning standards (Common Core, TEKS,
etc.) to life with Jay McTighe’s new, interactive ebook,
Core Learning: Assessing What Matters Most.

• Get samples of rich performance

tasks for meaningful learning and
relevant assessment
• View 23 full-length classroom
videos of teachers using a variety
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• Engage in an online community
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with the author and other readers

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www.core-assessments.com or 866-501-6939
The Right
QUESTIONS,
The Right Way
What do the questions Dylan Wiliam
teachers ask in class
I
t is perhaps the most familiar of all
really reveal about classroom routines: A teacher asks
the class a question, several stu-
student learning? dents raise their hands, the teacher
selects one of those with a hand
raised, the student gives a response, the
teacher evaluates the student’s response,
and the cycle begins again. Education
researchers call it the standard classroom
transaction model or just I-R-E (for
© GALE ZUCKER
16 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
initiation-response-evaluation). You will
find this model played out it in the vast
majority of classrooms in every country
in the world. Teachers use this routine
to assess where students are so that they
can plan next steps. Yet just about every
aspect of this scenario actually gets in
the way of learning—and it doesn’t
provide enough information on what
most students in the class know and
need to learn.
What’s Wrong with
the Traditional Routine?
The fundamental flaw in the traditional
questioning model is that it makes
participation voluntary. The con-
fident students engage by raising their
hands—and by engaging in classroom
discussion, they become smarter. But
others decline the invitation to par-
ticipate and thus miss out on the chance
to get smarter.
This creates what Keith Stanovich
(1986) once called an educational
Matthew effect, an idea drawn from
the biblical passage that reads, “For
the one who has will be given more,
and he will have more than enough.
But the one who does not have, even
what he has will be taken from him”
(Matthew 25:29). Psychologists call it

the multiplier effect, made famous by
Malcolm Gladwell (2008) in his book
Outliers. The oldest children in their
grade experience early success, which
leads to greater effort, which leads to
still greater success. The younger stu-
dents feel unsuccessful and often con-
centrate on other pursuits.
A second problem with the tra-
ditional approach is that even if a
teacher chooses students at random,
the teacher will only be assessing the
understanding of one or two students.
Making an instructional decision about
what to do next with a class on the
basis of the responses of one or two
students is unlikely to be a recipe for
success.
The third problem with the standard
questioning model is that teachers
rarely plan the questions they use.
When, as teachers, we ask questions
and get the answers we were hoping
for, we generally conclude that stu-
dents’ learning is on track. But if the
questions have not been carefully
planned, there is a real danger of con-
cluding that the students are on the
© SUSIE FITZHUGH
right track when, in fact, their under-
standing of the subject is quite dif-
ferent from what we intend.
There are solutions to these
problems that any teacher can
implement, at little or no cost. These
solutions have been known for years,
yet they are still rare in classrooms.
No Hands Up
Perhaps the simplest way to improve
classroom questioning is simply not
to ask for volunteers, but instead to
choose a student at random. Students
raise their hands only to ask ques-
tions, not to answer them. Such a
move is unpopular—teachers find
it difficult to manage, students who
used to raise their hands in response
to every question can’t show off
their knowledge, and students who
used to have a quiet life now have to
pay attention. But in terms of small
changes that can have big effects, “no
hands up” may be the most significant
thing a teacher can do.
Selecting students at random is more
difficult than teachers think. When
time is tight, teachers are often drawn
to “the usual suspects” for a good
strong response. This is why some sort
of randomization device is helpful.
Many interactive whiteboards have
randomizers built into the software,
randomizers can be downloaded
from the Internet, and there are even
smartphone apps for randomizing.
However, for random questioning, it is
hard to beat students’ names on tongue
depressors.
Many teachers prefer to choose the
student first and then ask the question,
but this is generally a bad idea, because
as soon as students know who is going
to have to respond to the question, all
the other students can relax. It is far
better to ask the question first, give
students time to think of a response,
and then pick a student at random to
respond.
The danger here is that the teacher
will select a student for whom the
question is too easy or too hard.
There is certainly no point in asking a
student a question the teacher knows
the student cannot answer, but when
teachers assume they know which stu-
dents can answer and which cannot,
they tend to produce self-fulfilling
prophecies. As one student I inter-
viewed about “no hands up” said,
“I never knew my classmates were so
smart.”
One way to make questions suitable
for any student is to pose them in a
way that allows students to engage
with the question at a number of dif-
ferent levels. For example, rather than
asking students to answer a math
question, the teacher could pose two
questions of differing difficulty on
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 17
the board and ask, “Which of these
two questions is harder and why?”
The ensuing discussion will raise all
the important mathematical issues
that the teacher needs to cover, but
the question has been posed in an
inclusive way that enables more stu-
dents to contribute, thus supporting
differentiated instruction.
As the work of James T. Dillon
(1988) has shown, it is particularly
effective to forgo questions entirely
and instead make statements to which
students are expected to respond.
Through follow-up, the teacher can
deal with any misunderstanding or
other issue that the response reveals
without “wrong-footing” students from
the outset.
For example, rather than asking stu-
dents in a world history class, “Which
country was most to blame for the out-
break of World War I?” which is likely
to have students just plumping for
different countries, the teacher might
make the statement, “Russia was most
to blame for the outbreak of World
War I,” and expect students to react.
And rather than saying, “What do you
mean by that?” the teacher could say,
“I’m confused by what you’re saying.”
The differences are small, but research
by Dillon and others shows that these
small changes can have a big effect
on the length and depth of student
responses.
The whole idea that students should
always answer teachers’ questions
material and tested on their recall, the sense of 30 idiosyncratic responses in
students who did badly on the test seconds. However, if the teacher asks a
and are shown their mistakes and the multiple-choice question, the potential
correct answers are the students who variety of the students’ responses is
score best on a post-test weeks later. more manageable.
The no-hands-up approach can The problem with multiple-choice
make discussions more engaging, but questions is that they take time to
this approach still only assesses the construct, and it is practically impos-
learning of a few students. To plan sible to invent a good multiple-choice
next steps, teachers need information question on the fly. Yet if students
from every student in the class. write more than three words each on a
dry-erase board, then in a class of 30,
All-Student Response Systems the teacher has over 100 words to read,
In higher education, electronic voting so it’s important to keep it simple. If
systems or “clickers” have enabled a question is likely to require a longer
professors to make their lectures
much more interactive. However, in
classrooms of 20 to 30 students, the
cost of the necessary equipment
and the time required to set
it up may outweigh the
benefits. In addition,
the fact that electronic
voting systems enable
the teacher to have
a record of every
response made by
every student seems
to be at variance
with the idea of
the classroom as a
safe place for making
mistakes.
I prefer low-tech solu-
tions for quickly assessing
student understanding: ABCD
cards students hold up to answer
multiple-choice questions, dry-erase © SUSIE FITZHUGH

correctly is actually rather odd. If the
students are answering every one of
the teacher’s questions correctly, the
teacher is surely wasting the students’
time. If the questions are not causing
students to struggle and think, they are
probably not worth asking. As I say to
students, “Mistakes are evidence that
the questions I asked are tough enough
to make you smarter.” Of course, the
best teachers have always said that
making mistakes is OK, but recent
research has shown that making mis-
takes in learning is actually better than
not making mistakes (Huelser & Met-
calfe, 2012). When students are taught
boards students write answers on, and
having students hold up a number
of fingers. None of these ideas is
new. After all, the dry-erase board is
simply the 21st century’s version of
the student slate. The powerful thing
about all these approaches is that the
teacher can quickly scan the students’
responses and make an immediate
decision about what to do next.
To make scanning easier, I rec-
ommend the use of multiple-choice
questions. If a teacher asks students to
write their own answers to a question
on dry-erase boards, the teacher has a
complex data-processing task: making
response, then it may be more appro-
priate to issue each student an index
card and ask students to write their
responses on the card. If this is done
toward the end of a lesson, the teacher
can ask students to hand in these “exit
passes” as they leave the class.
If the students turn in the cards
anonymously, then the teacher can just
make a decision about where to begin
the next lesson. If, however, the stu-
dents write their names on their cards,
the teacher can assign students to sit
at different tables for the beginning

18 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

of the next lesson, either by grouping
students with significant misunder-
standings at one table and working
with them while the rest of the class
works on extension material or by cre-
ating mixed-ability groups so students
can compare responses and help one
another.
Planning Questions
When teachers plan lessons, they
generally plan, in considerable detail,
the kinds of activities in which they
will engage the students, the learning
intentions of the lesson, and a number
of other features. It’s far less common
for teachers to plan the questions
they will use to determine whether
the instruction has succeeded. The
result is that questions often do not
reveal important aspects of students’
thinking, and therefore important mis-
understandings go undetected. When
teachers are aware of common student
misunderstandings, they can construct
questions ahead of time that reveal
where students are confused.
For example, consider the following
mathematics question.
Simplify the following fraction: 16/64
If a student (correctly) responds
that the fraction can be simplified to
¼, many teachers would conclude
that the student understands how to
simplify fractions. However, some
students simplify this fraction not by
realizing that the denominator is four
times as large as the numerator, but by
“cancelling” the sixes in the numerator
and denominator: 16/64. In this case, an
incorrect strategy leads to a correct
response. With a different question,
such as being asked to simplify 24/48,
the student using this method would
respond with 2/8, and we would realize
there is something wrong.
In English language arts, students
may answer questions correctly by
using a rule that any word that ends
in -ly is an adverb, which works much
of the time but not with words like
leisurely or lovely. Using one of those
words in a question about parts of
speech will reveal students’ incomplete
understanding.
In science, young children can often
appear to distinguish living things
from nonliving things on the basis
of whether they move. Such a naïve
strategy will yield the correct answer
if students are asked whether rocks,
cats, or birds are living, but not if the
teacher asks whether buses, com-
puters, trees, or grass are living. We
want students with the right thinking
and students with the wrong thinking
to give us different answers. If students
with the right thinking and students
Making mistakes in
learning is actually
better than not
making mistakes.
with the wrong thinking give us the
same answer, the question is not par-
ticularly useful.
Planning questions is especially
important when teaching academic
subjects because we cannot peer into
students’ brains to see what is going
on. When a right-handed student
throws a baseball standing with the
right foot in front of the left, or when
a violin student holds the bow with
the hand below the bow rather than
above, it’s obvious what is going
wrong. But with academic subjects,
we have to elicit evidence of student
thinking so that we can give useful
feedback. When people think about
formative assessment, they usually
think about feedback, but you can’t
give good feedback until you find out
what’s going wrong in the first place.
A Good Place to Start
Questioning and discussion are key
aspects of teachers’ work in class-
rooms, and yet too often, classroom
discussions involve only the most
confident students, ignore what is
happening in the heads of those not
volunteering to participate, and rely
on prompts and questions that have
not been planned in advance. By
picking students at random and by
using all-student response systems at
least once in every 20 to 30 minutes of
group instruction, teachers can ensure
that their decisions are based on the
learning needs of the whole class. By
planning their questions, teachers
can ensure they are tapping into deep
issues of learning, rather than skating
across the surface.
These three ideas—no hands up, all-
student response systems, and
planning questions—are not the only,
or even the most, important aspects of
teaching. Trying to manage the
learning that is happening in 30 dif-
ferent minds at the same time will
always be extraordinarily challenging.
But by increasing the engagement of
students, and thus improving the
feedback from the teacher, we can
make a real difference. One teacher
described the process as making the
students’ voices louder and making the
teacher’s hearing better. Sounds like a
good place to start. EL
References
Dillon, J. T. (1988). Questioning and
teaching: A manual of practice. London:
Croom Helm.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of
success. New York: Little, Brown.
Huelser, B. J., & Metcalfe, J. (2012).
Making related errors facilitates
learning, but learners do not know it.
Memory and Cognition, 40(4), 514–527.
Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects
in reading: Some consequences of indi-
vidual differences in the acquisition of
literacy. Reading Research Quarterly,
21(4), 360–407.
Dylan Wiliam (dylanwiliam@mac.com)
lives in New Jersey and is Emeritus
Professor of Educational Assessment at
the Institute of Education, University of
London. He is the author of Embedded
Formative Assessment (Solution Tree,
2011).
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 19
Thoughtful Assessment
with the

Learner in Mind Assessing thoughtfully means

keeping a continual focus on
each learner’s needs.
Jan Chappuis

M
any of us didn’t begin
our education careers
with expertise in
classroom assessment.
Our preservice prepa-
ration focused primarily on the act of
instructing, defined as planning and
delivering lessons. Assessments typi-
cally came from the textbook mate-
rials, they were administered after
instruction was complete, and their
results took the form of a grade.
Although we’ve developed a more
robust understanding of classroom
assessment options, we can still be
caught off guard by misapplications
of well-intended practices. The
emphasis on rigor, data-based decision
making, and paced instruction may
lead teachers to make serious errors in
assessing student learning. Here’s how
to address these issues thoughtfully.

Issue 1. Ensuring Rigor

Over the years, we’ve repeatedly heard
that we need to ratchet up the rigor

PHOTO BY KEVIN DAVIS

in our content standards. The
Common Core State Standards
and the new Next Generation
Science Standards have been
developed with increased rigor as a
primary goal. This has led to a demand
for equally rigorous assessments.
Take, for example, Grade 6 Writing
Standard 8:
Gather relevant information from multiple print
and digital sources; assess the credibility of each
source; and quote or paraphrase the data and con-
clusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and pro-
viding basic bibliographic information for sources. (National
PHOTO BY KEVIN DAVIS
Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council
of Chief State School Officers, 2010, p. 44)
Q How to look for sources of information.
Faced with a complex standard such as this one, how Q How to paraphrase.
might I adapt a previously developed research project Q How to properly punctuate quotations.

related to sources of renewable energy? The original Q How to prepare a bibliography.

assignment asked students to choose one source of
renewable energy, learn more about it, identify its advan-
tages and drawbacks for large-scale use, and share their
learning with their classmates through a report. In adapting
the project to fit this writing standard, I might think it’s
enough to require students to use at least four credible
sources drawn from both print and digital media, to include
information in both paraphrased and quoted form, and
to prepare a bibliography that includes all the sources
they used. Then I might plan instruction in each of the
following:
However, if I don’t look carefully at the types of thinking
required by the standard, I most likely will miss teaching
and assessing at the appropriate level of rigor. If I examine
this writing standard more closely, I find four separate
learning targets. The first learning target—gather relevant
information from multiple print and digital sources—requires
that students engage in evaluative reasoning to judge rele-
vance. Without a closer look, I may have taught about types
of print and digital sources, rather than about the concept
of relevance. The second learning target—assess the credi-
bility of each source—also requires evaluative reasoning, this

Trying shouldn’t result in the punishment of a low grade assigned too soon.

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 21
time to evaluate credibility. Without
a closer look, I may have simply
required that the sources be credible.
The third learning target—quote or
paraphrase the data and conclusions
of others while avoiding plagiarism—
requires that students know how and
when to quote or paraphrase infor-
mation. Without a closer look, I may
have taught the procedural knowledge
without teaching the thinking that
underlies the effective use of quotes
and paraphrases.
The challenge with misconceptions
is to correctly identify them and then
plan lessons to dislodge them.
So when we take the content
standard apart and classify each part
according to the type of learning it
calls for, we can more clearly see what
we need to teach. Do my students
understand the concept of relevance?
What guidelines can I provide to help
them evaluate potential sources? What
practice with determining relevance
should students do before beginning
the project? Do they understand what
to look for to determine credibility?
What guidelines can I offer?
If we have standards calling for
deeper learning, it stands to reason
that we’ll need assessments that do so,
too. But if we believe we can address
the issue of rigor by simply giving rig-
orous assessments, we’ve missed the
point, which is to help students master
that deeper learning.
Rigor resides in the standards.
Rigor in assessment must be pre-
ceded by instruction in the type of
thinking called for by the rigor of the
standards.
22 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
ÎAssessing thoughtfully means making
sure we teach students how to accom-
plish the rigor embedded in our stan-
dards before we hold them accountable
for having mastered that rigor.
Issue 2. Using Data Wisely
Gathering Diagnostic Assessment Data
Research over the last decade (Hattie,
2009) has shown that gathering evi-
dence of student learning during
instruction can lead to improved
achievement. Although many assess-
ments are administered with the
intent of generating diagnostic infor-
mation, not all are capable of doing so
(Wiliam, 2013).
For example, consider the following
test item:
Which fraction is largest?
a) 1/3 b) 2/5 c) 7/9
Many 4th graders would most likely
be able to choose the correct answer
c because both the numerator and the
denominator are the largest numbers
in the set. However, this set of answer
choices doesn’t accurately differentiate
between students who understand
the concept and students who don’t.
Students could get it right for the right
reason (because they understand that
the relationship between the numerator
and the denominator determines size)
or for the wrong reason (because they
believe that size is determined by
the numerator or denominator). The
problem doesn’t help ferret out mis-
conceptions that may be lurking.
If we plan to use information from
our assessments, the information
must first be accurate. When stu-
dents can get an item right for the
wrong reasons, we haven’t examined
the answer choices carefully enough.
And if the wrong answer choices
don’t give us information about what
problems further instruction should
address, the item doesn’t have any
diagnostic power. Assessments that
yield actionable diagnostic information
provide results that identify specific
learning needs. Such assessments are
instructionally tractable (Andrade,
2013).
Consider the answer choices in this
problem:
Which fraction is largest?
a) 2/1 b) 3/8 c) 4/3
Students who understand that the
relationship between the numerator
and the denominator determines size
will choose answer a. Students who
use the denominator to determine size
will likely choose answer b. Students
who use the numerator to determine
size will likely choose answer c. With
answer choices like these, you know
who does and doesn’t understand mag-
nitude in fractions, and you also know
what to focus on with students who’ve
selected either of the two wrong
answers.
The diagnostic capability of an
assessment is key to its instructional
traction. Assessments of all types—
selected response, written response,
performance assessment, and personal
communication—can be designed
to provide results that are instruc-
tionally tractable, both as a formal
assessment and as an informal lesson-
embedded activity. (See fig. 1 on p. 25
for examples of multiple-choice item
formulas designed to identify specific
flaws in reasoning.)
ÎAssessing thoughtfully means
requiring that assessments we intend
to use diagnostically have sufficient
instructional traction.
Using Diagnostic Information
to Plan Instruction
Students encounter difficulty
during instruction for a
variety of reasons. Which
actions teachers take
depend on the type of
learning needs our diagnostic
information has revealed. It’s
not enough to know that students
haven’t mastered something yet—it’s
also important to know the type of
problem that is standing in the way
of mastery so that we can plan appro-
priate next-step instruction.
We can think of the errors that
students make as falling into three
categories: errors due to incomplete
understanding, errors due to flaws
in reasoning, and errors due to mis-
conceptions (Chappuis, 2014).
Errors due to incomplete under-
standing. These kinds of errors are
fairly easy to recognize and correct.
They are not so much errors as they
are lack of knowledge: The student’s
work shows at least partial knowledge,
which provides an opportunity for
further instruction.
For example, when primary
children start stringing written words
together into complete thoughts, they
might put a period between each word
instead of at the end. They understand
something about using periods, but
they haven’t learned their proper use.
Teachers shouldn’t mark the periods
as wrong, but, instead, should move
students toward stringing words
together as units of thought and then
teach them to use periods where a unit
of thought ends.
Likewise, elementary students
studying ecosystems may not know
that river and stream water is called
fresh water—they may call it some-
thing like plain water. Teachers can
simply supply the new term and help
students under-
stand it by distin-
guishing it from salt
water.
For an error that is caused
by incomplete understanding or
lack of knowledge not yet taught,
rather than labelling it as an error,
teachers can introduce the new infor-
mation immediately or, as in the case
with the primary students and period
use, when it becomes developmentally
appropriate.
Errors due to flaws in reasoning.
Addressing errors that are the result of
flaws in reasoning requires thinking
carefully about the type of reasoning
involved and then helping students
recognize typical errors for that par-
ticular pattern of reasoning.
For example, when students are
asked to generalize, they often either
overgeneralize or don’t generalize
at all. When they’re asked to infer,
they often don’t read carefully to
look for evidence that will support an
inference. When they’re asked to sum-
marize, they often leave out important
points or include unimportant ones.
To overcome flaws in reasoning,
teachers should help students under-
stand the salient features of the
PHOTO BY KEVIN DAVIS
pattern of reasoning and let them
examine examples of the flaws so they
can more easily recognize them before
the students begin practicing with that
pattern of reasoning in the context of a
given subject.
In the case of generalization, a
teacher might signal reasoning flaws
by making the statement, “All dogs
have four legs.” But some dogs—due
to injury or illness—have fewer legs,
and a few students most likely would
point this out. By asking students to
come up with a statement they could
agree on—such as, “Most dogs have
four legs”—the teacher can lead stu-
dents to conclude that her broader
claim is an overgeneralization, a claim
that goes too far.
To help students distinguish
between overgeneralizations and
appropriate ones, the teacher might
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 23
assign students a short passage to
read that’s accompanied by three
statements, two of which are over-
generalizations and one of which is
an appropriate generalization. After
reading the passage, students could
work in pairs to determine which is
which and to explain their choices.
To overcome the tendency to
draw an inference based on too little
information, a teacher might use an
everyday example, such as making a
guess about a student’s favorite color
on the basis of one article of clothing
that student has chosen to wear and
asking students to identify why that
guess might not yield a defensible
inference. Students could then work
with a partner to examine a set of pos-
sible inferences drawn from a short
reading passage to determine which
are based on sufficient evidence and
which are not.
When students’ summaries leave
out important points or include
unimportant details, the teacher might
create a summary of a familiar story,
such as the story of Goldilocks and
the Three Bears, that has one of those
problems. The teacher would explain
to students that a good summary is
a brief description of the main ideas
and then ask students to determine
whether the summary of the Goldi-
locks story is a good one—and if it’s
not, why not.
With errors due to flaws in rea-
soning, give students time to analyze
examples of typical flaws as well as
examples of good reasoning before
asking them to practice that type of
reasoning themselves.
Errors due to misconceptions. Mis-
conceptions involve students either
having learned something inaccurately
or having internalized an explanation
for a phenomenon that doesn’t fit with
current best thinking. Basically, with a
misconception, students have learned
or internalized something that they
believe to be correct but that isn’t.
24 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
SHUTTERSTOCK
The challenge with misconceptions
is to correctly identify them and
then plan lessons to dislodge them.
Misconceptions are stubborn: They
can’t be corrected by papering over
them. To illustrate, let’s look at a mis-
conception that’s common in middle
school science. Newton’s first law of
motion states that a force is not needed
to keep an object in motion, yet many
students (and adults) will tell you that
if an object is in motion, it will require
a force to stay in motion, which seems
like common sense. (Aristotle thought
this, by the way.) Memorizing the
principles of the first law—“an object
at rest will stay at rest” and “an object
will continue with constant velocity
unless acted on by an unbalanced
force”—is generally not enough to
counter what our senses tell us about
force and motion: If you want a book
to keep moving across a table, you
have to keep pushing it.
One effective approach to dislodging
misconceptions (Hattie, 2009) is to
first create an awareness of the mis-
conception by providing students
with an experience—such as a dem-
onstration or a reading passage—that
runs counter to the misconception in
some way. The teacher might then ask
students, Where does the experience
contradict what you think is right? to
identify the misconception and con-
trast it with the correct interpretation.
Finally, when students are able to do
so, have them explain why the mis-
conception is incorrect.
Misconceptions, whether in science,
social studies, mathematics, language
arts, or any other discipline, require
an intentional approach tailored to the
nature of the misconception because
the teaching challenge is to cause
conceptual change—to have students
give up the inaccurate conception
they currently hold in favor of an
accurate one.
ÎAssessing thoughtfully means
searching out what students’ work
tells us about their learning needs and
planning further instruction accordingly.
Using Common Assessments
as Diagnostic Information
Over the past decade, many schools
and districts have engaged in various
forms of data-driven decision making
in which they gather evidence of
student achievement and then discuss
next steps. Teachers often admin-
ister a common formative assessment
designed to cover a set number of
content standards so they can meet to
discuss the results.
One typical problem here is that
the assessment may or may not
measure what the teacher has taught.
Formative assessment information
that teachers gather during learning
must reflect the content standard that
students are in the midst of learning.
Teachers need to be able to gather
this information informally every
day and formally on a regular basis.
If teachers give common formative
assessments when they haven’t taught
all the content standards repre-
sented on that assessment or aren’t
at a point in instruction where the
information is actionable, they’ve put
accountability before the thoughtful
use of formative assessment. When
teachers are required to give pre-
determined common assessments at
a predetermined time, accountability
for covering material has superseded
instructional use.
We can overcome this problem
by identifying which learning target
each item on a common assessment
measures and by checking to be sure
whether formative information about
that learning target is needed before
administering that part of the common
assessment.
ÎAssessing thoughtfully means using
common formative assessments only
when they are instructionally relevant
both in content and in timing.
Issue 3. Keeping Learning
Moving Forward
Pacing
After we’ve planned and delivered
the lesson and after the students have
done something in response, we know
whether they’ve mastered the intended
learning. If the evidence suggests that
they haven’t, our options are to grade
the assessment and move on, reteach
the lesson, or figure out what the stu-
dents’ current learning needs are in
relation to the content standard and
teach to those needs. Research con-
sistently favors option three (Hattie,
2009; Wiliam, 2013).
However, when the content and
rate of instruction are controlled by
a pacing guide, there’s little oppor-
tunity to do anything but grade the
work and move on. Many pacing
guides have been developed with
an incomplete understanding of the
role that diagnostic assessment infor-
mation plays in effective teaching
and learning. If teachers are to
comply with a district, building, or
department mandate to adhere to
the established pacing guide, they
FIGURE 1. How to Create Test Items with Instructional Traction
INFER
Question: Which idea could you infer from the text? or, Which idea does this
selection suggest?
Possible Answers:
Q The right answer: A guess based on evidence found in the passage.
Q Distractor: A guess that includes a word or concept copied directly from the
passage but that is not supported by the meaning of the passage.
Q Distractor: A guess that might seem reasonable but for which there is no
evidence in the passage.
SUMMARIZE
Question: Which sentence best summarizes what this passage is about?
Possible Answers:
Q The right answer: A statement of the main ideas of the passage.
Q Distractor: A statement of one main idea, not sufficiently broad to represent
the whole passage.
Q Distractor: A statement including an idea not found in the passage.
Q Distractor: A statement of one fact or detail from the passage.
IDENTIFY CAUSE AND EFFECT
Question: Which sentence best explains why ________(an event or action)
happened?
Possible Answers:
Q The right answer: A plausible statement of causation based on evidence
from the text.
Q Distractor: A statement of causation that is not supported by evidence
from the text.
Q Distractor: A statement that offers another effect rather than a cause.
Source: From Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning (2nd ed., in press), by Jan Chappuis, 2015,
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Copyright 2015 by Pearson. Reprinted with permission.
simply have no time to slow down doesn’t demonstrate at least partial
instruction to the pace of learning. mastery, feedback is not the best
Because it’s often not a straight shot response. Hattie identifies the teacher’s
from instruction to mastery, good willingness to seek disconfirming evi-
teaching includes knowing how to dence—to actively look for evidence of
keep learning moving forward in the those parts of the learning that need
face of difficulty. John Hattie (2009) additional focus—as the most crucial
calls this part of teaching a feedback factor in helping each student learn.
loop. An effective feedback system This should be the main purpose of
begins with feedback to the teacher our diagnostic assessments, whether
from the students about what they they’re formal events, such as quizzes
have and have not learned. Feedback and tests, or informal events, such as
to the student may be the appropriate questioning, dialogue, homework, and
next step, but when student work quick-checks.
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 25
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26 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
Î Assessing thoughtfully means
ensuring that our pacing guides accom-
modate the teaching and learning needs
that our diagnostic assessments have
identified.
About Grading Too Soon
Students make decisions every day
about who they are as learners,
whether to try, and whether they’re
good at specific subjects or school in
general on the basis of what we do
in response to their assignments and
assessments.
Let’s assume that students don’t
already know the things we’re
teaching. It’s reasonable to assume
that they’ll need instruction followed
by practice, which they’ll often not
execute perfectly at the start. If stu-
dents receive a grade on their practice
work, those who don’t do well will
tend to conclude that they aren’t very
good at the task or subject. And if we
average the grades on earlier attempts
with later evidence showing increased
mastery, we won’t accurately represent
students’ true level of mastery. As
a result, some students may simply
give up trying when they realize they
can’t overcome the damage done to
their grade by their initial lack of
understanding.
Yet, that’s the premise we began
with: They aren’t good at it . . . yet.
Grading too soon in the learning
process can lead students to the dam-
aging inference that being good means
not having to try and that if you have
to try, you aren’t smart in the subject.
If one of our goals is to get students to
try, then trying shouldn’t result in the
punishment of a low grade assigned
too soon.
During the learning, students’
work will reveal some combination
of incomplete understanding, flaws
in reasoning, or misconceptions.
Our job as teachers is to examine
student work and offer sufficient
penalty-free practice time, reteach and
redirect students when needed, and
provide both success and intervention
feedback as called for.
Î Assessing thoughtfully means giving
students sufficient time and opportunity
to practice and improve through further
instruction and feedback before holding
them accountable for having mastered
the learning target.
From Issue to Opportunity
The heightened rigor of the new
content standards, using assessment
information for data-driven decision
making, and using pacing guides to
map instruction can all contribute to
better learning for our students—if we
pay attention to what the learner
needs. Assessment, when carried out
thoughtfully, is at the heart of teaching
well to meet those needs.EL
References
Andrade, H. L. (2013). Classroom
assessment in the context of learning
theory and research. In J. H. McMillan
(Ed.), SAGE handbook of research on
classroom assessment (pp. 17–34). Los
Angeles: SAGE.
Chappuis, J. (2014). Seven strategies of
assessment for learning (2nd ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A syn-
thesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating
to achievement. New York: Routledge.
National Governors Association Center
for Best Practices & Council of Chief
State School Officers. (2010). Common
Core State Standards for English lan-
guage arts and literacy in history/social
studies, science, and technical subjects.
Washington, DC: Author.
Wiliam, D. (2013). Feedback and instruc-
tional correctives. In J. H. McMillan
(Ed.), SAGE handbook of research on
classroom assessment (pp. 197–214). Los
Angeles: SAGE.
Jan Chappuis (janchappuis90@gmail
.com) is an independent consultant
specializing in classroom assessment
practices and author of Seven Strategies
of Assessment for Learning, 2nd ed.
(Pearson, 2014).
 English Language Arts
Mathematics
Grades 6–12

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 By listening carefully to
what students say and
thinking deeply about
how to better guide them,
teachers can become
accomplished formative
assessors.

Formative Assessment in

Seven Good Moves

Brent Duckor

T
he research is clear: What teachers do in
their classrooms matters. But which prac-
tices really make a difference? John Hattie
(2012) conducted an extensive meta-
analysis, looking at 800 meta-analyses that
focused on locating a specific student achievement
outcome and identifying an influence on that outcome.
Formative assessment topped his list of the most influ-
ential practices that improve student outcomes.
What makes formative assessment so effective? It
depends on whom you talk to. Although experts tell us
that formative assessment is one of the most powerful
ways to raise student achievement (Black & Wiliam,
1998), we don’t always know which practices are most
effective, when to deploy them, and why a particular
combination actually worked for a particular student
in a particular classroom. We often hear that the
best feedback practices must be specific, addressable,
timely, ongoing, and content-rich (Wiggins, 2012). But
many beginning teachers and administrators don’t have
a clear idea of what these terms mean.

SHUTTERSTOCK
 For informed teacher educators,
formative assessment is more than
a checklist of qualities or collection
of activities. Rather, it’s made up
of a sequence of moves that invite a
positive, ongoing relationship between
teachers and their students. It’s the job
of teacher educators to connect theory
to practice and work with beginners to
become better formative assessors.
Seven Essential Moves
Through watching hours of video-
taped lessons and observing even
more live lessons in middle and high
school classrooms, my colleagues and
I have identified seven basic moves
that are essential to rich formative
assessment practice (Duckor, Honda,
Pink, Wilmot, & Wilson, 2012). These
moves involve asking effective ques-
tions, giving students adequate time to
think and respond, and asking probing
follow-up questions that deepen
student understanding. By practicing
these moves, beginning teachers can
develop into skillful assessors.
We created the names for these
seven formative assessment moves to
better describe to teacher candidates
what we, as teacher educators, are
looking for during observations in the
classroom.
Move 1. Prime students first.
Priming sets the stage for all other
formative assessment moves. Teachers
will need to let the class know they’ll
be asking questions and calling on
students in ways that students may be
unfamiliar with. Questions will also
prompt students to more deeply reflect
on their classmates’ responses and
make new connections. Some students
may experience this new classroom
culture as strange.
For example, if a teacher follows
up on a student’s response by asking,
“Can you say more about why that
is?” some students might see this
as a challenge or even a personal
attack. A more positive follow-up
question—such as, “I like this idea.
Could you elaborate, explaining it in
your own words?”—would more likely
encourage a fuller and richer student
response.
Thus, teachers need to establish
norms and routines for inviting
student participation, especially for
students who aren’t familiar with
assessment practices outside the
normal experience of “doing school.”
They also need to reflect on the
various moves they do implement,
whether it’s increasing wait time or not
having students raise hands to answer
questions. By keeping notes on how
the various approaches worked and
with which students, we can agree
on goals for the beginning teacher’s
A well-posed question creates an
opportunity to meet learners at
their current level of understanding.
next steps in becoming a more com-
petent formative assessor (Duckor &
Holmberg, 2013).
Like anthropologists doing
fieldwork, teachers who are devel-
oping their skills in formative
assessment are trying to understand
and practice a new way of school life—
for themselves and for their students.
In the formative assessment–driven
classroom, everyone is consciously
engaged in practices that promote
further learning, as opposed to those
that merely assess student achievement
(Stiggins, 2002).
It’s not uncommon for students
who have suddenly been immersed in
this “foreign” classroom culture to ask
questions like these:
Q Why is the teacher asking “why?”
so much?
Q Why is the teacher using equity
sticks (Popsicle sticks with a student’s
name written on each one) to call on
us?
Q Why is the teacher waiting a bit
before taking answers, instead of just
calling on Mary and John, who have
their hands up?
Q Why is the teacher putting all
answers on the whiteboard, even the
wrong ones?
Q Why is the teacher always
answering a question with another
question?
Q Why can’t the teacher just solve
the problem and write the correct
answer on the board so we can move
on?
Unfortunately, the literature on
formative assessment provides few
accounts of the culture shock many
students experience when they’re
expected to learn in this new and
perhaps puzzling manner.
Move 2. Pose good questions.
Asking questions seems so easy.
Teachers prompt students here and
there to answer a few questions during
a lecture, typically calling on just a few
students to give the correct answer.
Most students simply nod their heads
while waiting for the teacher to get
back to the lecture.
When it comes to effective posing
of questions, the kinds of questions
teachers ask matter. In the beginning
teacher’s classroom, questions often
fall flat. Sometimes the questions
imply a right/wrong dichotomy,
which fails to invite or elicit a range of
student responses. For example, “Can
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 29
someone give me the definition of
mitosis?”
Other times, the questions are too
open-ended. They tend to overshoot
and intimidate students: “Why did the
French Revolution occur?” “How do
polynomial functions work?” “Can
someone tell me what a thesis is?”
But some questions can promote
thinking and learning. An effective
question sizes up the context for
learning, has a purpose related to the
lesson and unit plan, and, ideally, is
related to larger essential questions
in the discipline. During a lesson on
the civil rights movement (Gold &
Lanzoni, 1993), a teacher at New
York’s Central Park East Secondary
School asked students, “Should the
integration of public facilities [in this
scenario, a skating rink owned by
whites] extend beyond the ruling on
education addressed by the Brown v.
Board of Education decision?” As the
students worked to integrate primary
sources into their oral arguments—
and used words from those documents
to make sense of such concepts as seg-
regation, integration, and equality—
they engaged in a lively give-and-take
discussion. All the while, the teacher
pushed back on their diverse
responses, inviting deeper reflection.
Posing good questions requires that
teachers know their audience and adapt
questioning strategies to the responses
of their students in real time. A well-
posed question creates an opportunity
to meet learners at their current level
of understanding. Thus, formative
assessors need to know (or at least
anticipate) their students’ learning
progressions with complex material
so they can scaffold questions at key
points (pit stops and bottlenecks) in
the unit.
Move 3. Pause during questioning.
We all need time to process infor-
mation, to “transfer files” from our
short-term to our long-term memory
and back again. Our processing speed
30 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
varies according to the nature of the
information we’re asked to process
and our degree of familiarity with it.
That said, beginning teachers tend
to feel uncomfortable with wait time
between their questions and their stu-
dents’ responses. Moreover, they don’t
provide their students with enough
protocols for participation, such as
turn-and-talk, think-pair-share, or
polling for opinions, all of which
can provide the wait time needed to
increase participation.
Formative assessors will ask questions
and call on students in ways that
students may be unfamiliar with.
Pausing requires preparation. A
stopwatch, a smartphone, or a variety
of audio or video devices can help
track time between a question and
a response. Teachers might also try
counting out the pause in their heads.
The goal is to slow the process down.
One low-tech solution to slowing
down the question-and-answer
exchange is to set up a think-pair-
share and journal entry routine after
posing a question to the class. Stu-
dents can briefly talk to one another,
then write out their responses in their
journals, and then raise their hands
to show they’re ready to address the
teacher’s question.
In a heterogeneous classroom with
language learners, students with
special needs, and students with
different learning styles, pausing
can make all the difference. Giving
students extra time to clarify their
thinking gets more students into the
discussion and makes teachers more
aware of the level of understanding
of every student in the class. In the
absence of such information, the
formative assessor doesn’t even know
where to start with follow-up ques-
tioning strategies designed to further
elicit student thinking.
Move 4. Probe student responses.
Too often, beginning teachers ask
a question as though the answer to
that question were obvious: “Does
everyone understand?” “Did you copy
the information yet?” “Can we move
on now?” Or the teacher will ask a
question that has a single right answer.
As soon as one student answers the
question correctly, there’s no need for
follow-up because “we” now have the
correct answer. Compounding the dif-
ficulty, teachers may pose a question,
get a correct response, and then
silently wonder, “OK, now what do I
do?” Thus the familiar, “Uh . . . good
job!”
Probing suggests there’s always
more to know. Asking the standard
questions (Who? What? Where?
When? How? Why?) may lead to an
initial set of student responses that
satisfy the requirement for getting
through the lesson in time for Friday’s
quiz. But formative assessment is more
than a march toward the known. It’s a
process for uncovering deeper under-
standing, which means having access
to evidence about what students are
thinking.
For example, how can a teacher
know whether a student truly under-
stands why things sink or float
without first posing the question and
then probing a variety of possible
responses? Research on buoyancy
misconceptions reveals that students
typically think that big, heavy things
sink and small, light things float; that
hollow things float; and that sharp
edges make things sink (Yin, Tomita,
& Shavelson, 2008). After asking stu-
dents why some things float and others
sink, the teacher might ask, “So who
thinks things float because they’re
hollow? Can you say why? Turn to
your partner and ask for an example of
a hollow thing that might sink.”
Probing is about collecting more
substantial evidence to make decisions
about what to teach, reteach, or even
preteach for a particular group of stu-
dents. The more one learns about how
real students in a particular classroom
approach the material, the better one
can guide them through the bottle-
necks, cul-de-sacs, and eddies that will
inevitably mark a student’s progression
toward an understanding of concep-
tually difficult material.
Move 5. Bounce questions throughout
the classroom.
Feedback is about generating a loop.
That loop can be represented by the
connections or nodes of talk in the
classroom. Too often, the loop is too
small, occurring mostly between the
teacher and a few eager students.
Beginning teachers often pounce
on the first hand raised in response
to a question. There seems to be an
unbreakable bond between teachers
who struggle to elicit the correct
answer from their students and the
small number of willing students who
have that answer. Too often, the sym-
biotic relationship between these two
or three students and the teacher leads
to a false sense of feedback. When
asked after a lesson, “So who seems
to understand the objective of the
lesson?” the beginning teacher typi-
cally recalls the answers that the hard-
working, engaged students supplied.
Teachers can use equity sticks,
index cards, or other tools to gen-
erate a “bounce” of responses across
the classroom. They can even make
notations on the seating chart to keep
track of patterns of participation. By
increasing the breadth and depth of
student responses, the teacher is better
able to draw meaningful conclusions
about student understanding.
Without consistent procedures and
visible practices related to “bouncing,”
or spreading questions throughout
the classroom, there’s little hope
that the majority of the students will
actually engage in thinking through a
topic. We know from research on aca-
demic language and English language
development that providing opportu-
nities for students to articulate their
thinking—in a variety of productive
modes—is essential. This practice also
makes it more likely that all students
will feel included in classroom conver-
sations (Zwiers, 2007).
Move 6. Use tagging to generate a wide
range of responses.
A biology teacher begins class by
writing the word cell on the white-
board and asking, “What is a cell?”
Several students shout out their
answers. The teacher says, “Not quite,
but good tries”; writes the correct
textbook definition on the whiteboard;
and asks students to copy it into their
journals. Bad move.
Tagging is recognizing student con-
tributions to questions posed by the
teacher (or other students). A simple
tagging routine is the word web. Expe-
rienced formative assessors put a word
up in the classroom, making it visible
to all students—for example, “What is
the first thing that pops into your head
when you see the word ratio?” Then
they ask students to write down their
thinking. The word webs that emerge
from these call-and-response brain-
storming procedures encompass both
on- and off-target responses, which
all build a better picture of student
thinking about the topic.
Sometimes it helps to have students
turn to a peer and share a response or
question orally before they write. Stu-
dents might write a definition or draw
a picture—whatever works to get their
thinking started. The idea is to gen-
erate a wide range of responses.
Researchers point out that teachers
are often uncomfortable with soliciting
unorthodox or wrong answers (Black
& Wiliam, 1998). Teachers may think
that misconceptions could derail the
discussion. Of course, misconceptions
and students’ prior knowledge are at
the very heart of the learning process
in a formative assessment–driven
classroom (Shepard, 2000). If teachers
don’t create a space for students to
express both their understandings
and their misunderstandings, students
who are too embarrassed to express
a potentially incorrect answer will
simply remain silent.
Move 7. Build your bins.
We come full circle with the seventh
move, binning. If posing questions is
the alpha, then binning is the omega
move for the skilled formative assessor.
Bins are how we teachers categorize
student responses. We label some bins
correct answer, others misconception,
others proficient, and so on. Educa-
tional psychologists might refer to
bins as mental schema for assimilating
and accommodating new experiences.
When students respond to a question,
the teacher can potentially categorize,
sort, and “bin” it for later use.
For example, beginning teachers
often have difficulty hearing any
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 31
 responses that don’t fall into their
correct answer bin. They’re often
unfamiliar with student learning
progressions—how students work
themselves through the building
blocks of a big idea. In the science cur-
riculum that deals with why things
sink or float, for example, teachers
should know about common student
misconceptions related to mass,
volume, density, and relative density.
By failing to tag responses that evoke
those misconceptions, teachers reduce
the power of formative assessment to
uncover difficult learning steps along
the way. A teacher needs to know,
through practical training and rich
classroom experience, where kids get
stuck and why.
How to build this teacher knowledge
of different students’ learning pro-
gressions, in relation to different
topics and different levels of back-
ground knowledge, is one of the most
important formative assessment chal-
lenges (Heritage, 2008).
Practice, Practice, Practice:
On Making Good Moves
Our challenge as teacher educators
is to plant the seeds of formative
assessment in our preservice teachers
so those seeds take root and flourish
in these teachers’ careers. Of course,
beginning teachers are overwhelmed
by many demands—classroom man-
agement, content-knowledge prepa-
ration, grading, and staying on top
of their workloads, to name a few.
Beginning teachers may also feel con-
strained by conflicting messages about
what matters to students, parents, and
administrators.
However, because formative
assessment has such a great effect on
student outcomes, beginning teachers
need to take note. By practicing these
seven basic moves, all teachers can
develop the requisite expertise and
become more skilled formative
assessors. Research shows us that
32 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
formative assessment makes a dif-
ference not only for student outcomes,
but also for principals and teachers
looking to build stronger relationships
in their schools and classrooms.EL
References
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the
black box: Raising standards through
classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan,
80(2), 139–148.
Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2013).
Helping beginning student teachers
uncover the art and science of formative
feedback. California English, 18(4),
8–10.
Duckor, B., Honda, N., Pink, M., Wilmot,
D., & Wilson, M. (2012). Constructing
measures of teachers’ use of formative
assessment: An empirical case study of
novice teachers in the California middle
and high school classroom. Presented
at the California Educational Research
Association Conference, Monterey.
Gold, J. (Producer & Director), &
Lanzoni, M. (Ed.). (1993). Graduation
by portfolio: Central Park East Secondary
School [Video]. New York: Post Pro-
duction, 29th Street Video.
Hattie, J. (2012) Visible learning for
teachers: Maximizing impact on learning.
London: Routledge.
Heritage, M. (2008). Learning progressions:
Supporting instruction and formative
assessment. Washington, DC: Council of
Chief State School Officers.
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of
assessment in a learning culture. Educa-
tional Researcher, 29(7), 4–14.
Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Assessment crisis:
The absence of assessment FOR
learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(10),
758–765.
Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective
feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1),
10–16.
Yin, Y., Tomita, M. K., & Shavelson, R. J.
(2008). Diagnosing and dealing with
student misconceptions: Floating and
sinking. Science Scope, 31(8), 34–39.
Zwiers, J. (2007). Building academic lan-
guage: Essential practices for content
classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Brent Duckor (brent.duckor@sjsu.edu)
is an assistant professor at the Lurie
College of Education, San Jose State
University, California.
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New Assessments,
New Rigor
Researching. Synthesizing. Reasoning with evidence.
The PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments are
setting their sights on complex thinking skills.
Joan Herman and Robert Linn

E
xtensive research demonstrates the principle,
What you test is what you get. Study after
study shows that teachers tend to focus on
tested content and formats and to ignore
what’s not tested (Herman, 2004). This is a
prime rationale for the United States’ investment in the
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Career (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment
consortia—to develop assessment systems that will
embody the Common Core State Standards, focus
schools on supporting the deeper learning required for
college and career readiness, and help U.S. students
become more competitive with those in the highest-
performing countries.
 So how are the consortia doing? Our
analysis (Herman & Linn, 2013) pro-
vides some clues.
The Major Claims
Both consortia are using a transparent,
evidence-centered design approach
(Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 1999)
that views assessment as a process of
reasoning from evidence—student test
responses—to substantiate specific
claims about student competence.
Think of the claims as the major com-
petencies a test is designed to address
(and on which score reports will be
based) and, likewise, as the major
targets for classroom teaching and
learning.
Here’s a summary of PARCC and
Smarter Balanced claims in English
language arts:
Q Reading: Students can indepen-
dently read and closely analyze a range
of increasingly complex texts.
Q Writing: Students can produce
well-grounded and effective writing for
a variety of purposes and audiences.
Q Research: Students can build and
present knowledge through research
and the integration, comparison, and
synthesis of ideas.
Likewise, here’s a summary of
PARCC and Smarter Balanced claims
in mathematics:
Q Concepts and Procedures: Students
can explain and apply mathematical
concepts and procedures and carry out
mathematical procedures with pre-
cision and fluency.
Q Problem Solving: Students can
solve a range of complex, well-
posed problems in pure and applied
mathematics.
Q Communicating/Reasoning: Stu-
dents can clearly and precisely con-
struct viable arguments.
Q Modeling and Data Analysis:
Students can analyze complex, real-
world scenarios and construct and use
© MICHAEL AUSTIN
mathematical models to interpret and
solve problems.
The claims serve as the basis for
developing closely aligned items and
tasks. Each step of the process builds
on the previous one. If assessment
intents—the Common Core standards,
claims, and evidence targets—are not
well reflected in earlier stages, the final
operational test will be flawed.
Measuring Depth of Knowledge
We’ve been using Norman Webb’s
depth-of-knowledge framework
(Webb, Alt, Ely, & Vesperman, 2005)
to monitor how well the consortia are
incorporating the intent of the new
standards and their more rigorous
learning goals. The framework defines
The new standards and the consortia
assessments of those standards fully integrate
content with higher-order thinking.
four levels of depth of knowledge
that may be embodied in any given
assessment task or item:
Q Level 1 test items draw on basic
knowledge and rote learning—for
example, literal comprehension ques-
tions in reading or simple one-step
word problems in math.
Q Level 2 test items require some
application of what’s been learned
and some cognitive processing—for
example, finding the main idea of a
story when that idea is not explicitly
stated or doing a two-step word
problem.
Q Level 3 test items require the
student to research, synthesize,
reason with evidence, and commu-
nicate effectively. For example, an
assessment item might ask a student
to read an editorial on nuclear energy
and use evidence from the editorial
to analyze the strength of the author’s
argument. In mathematics, students
might be asked to make and justify an
investment decision on the basis of
their interpretation of complex data.
At this level, we see the increased rigor
of the new standards.
Q Level 4 test items require extended
planning, research, and problem
solving that call on students’ self-
management and metacognitive skills.
For example, students might be asked
to research a topic from multiple per-
spectives and present their findings
orally and in writing, using multiple
media. In mathematics, students might
use their mathematics knowledge to
research and recommend the most
cost-effective plan for solving an
authentic problem, like building a new
structure or buying a used car.
What We’ve Learned
In our analysis, we found that the
guiding claims convey rigorous aca-
demic learning goals and reflect Levels
3 and 4 in the depth-of-knowledge
framework. The claims are striking in
the attention they give to student capa-
bilities that current state tests typi-
cally fail to address—particularly the
third English language claim, which
focuses on research and synthesis, and
the third and fourth claims in math-
ematics, which focus on reasoning,
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 35
communication, and nonroutine real-
world problem solving. The consortia
are clearly after higher-order thinking
skills, but unlike in days past, those
skills are not divorced from content.
Instead, the new standards and the
consortia assessments of those stan-
dards fully integrate content with
higher-order thinking.
Both the PARCC and Smarter
Balanced assessments feature
technology-enhanced items as well as
extended-performance tasks that open
up new possibilities for assessment.
For example, rather than simply
selecting a response, students may
be asked to construct graphs, fill in
tables, highlight evidence that sup-
ports a point of view, use multiple
representations, and construct answers
to problems that are at Level 3 of the
framework.
The performance tasks reach even
further, to Level 4. For example, a
sample 7th grade PARCC English lan-
guage arts performance task asks stu-
dents to read three texts that describe
FIGURE 1. The Percentage of Smarter Balanced Test Items at Each of the
Four Levels of Norman Webb’s Depth-of-Knowledge Framework.
Depth-of-Knowledge Level
Level 1. Draws on basic knowledge
and rote learning
Level 2. Requires some application of
what’s been learned and some cog-
nitive processing
Level 3. Requires the ability to
research, synthesize, reason with evi-
dence, and communicate effectively
Level 4. Requires extended planning,
research, and problem solving that call
on students’ self-management and
metacognitive skills
36 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
Amelia Earhart’s bravery. Students
must then write an essay that analyzes
the strength of the arguments pre-
sented in at least two of the texts and
that uses textual evidence to support
their ideas. A sample 6th grade math
performance task asks students to
recommend which of three field trip
options the class should take on the
basis of such data as an actual survey
of their classmates’ preferences and a
comparison of costs in terms of trans-
portation time and expense. Students
must then use available data to justify
their decision.
How Do the Assessments
Stack Up Against State Tests?
A recent RAND study (Yuan & Le,
2012) suggests that current state
assessments lack such rigor. Drawing
on released items and test forms from
the 16 states thought to have the most
rigorous tests, Yuan and Le found a
preponderance of items at the first
two levels of the depth-of-knowledge
framework. Only about one-third of
English Math
Language Arts
25% 24%
38% 40%
26% 25%
11% 11%
the few constructed-response items
offered were at Level 3; fewer than
10 percent were at Level 4. In math,
Levels 1 and 2 predominated, even for
the constructed-response items.
The consortia expectations will
be a dramatic step forward in rigor.
Figure 1 shows the percentage of
Smarter Balanced test items at each
of the four levels. In contrast to most
state tests’ current meager represen-
tation at higher levels of the depth-of-
knowledge framework, these figures
suggest that more than one-third of
their new assessments will be com-
posed of items and tasks at Levels 3
and 4. The situation is similar for
PARCC, which has specified that one-
third of its items and tasks should be
at the equivalent of Level 3 or higher
(E. Dogan, personal communication,
September 27, 2013).
What Next?
We end where we started: If what you
test is what you get, then the consortia
tests are likely to set a high bar for aca-
demic rigor and provide a challenging
target for classroom teaching and
learning. The increased rigor embodies
the intent of the Common Core State
Standards and the desire for students
in the United States to be inter-
nationally competitive and prepared
for college and career. At the same
time, the demands of these tests are
likely to come as a shock for teachers
and students alike, as the results of
early standards-aligned tests in Ken-
tucky and New York have already
demonstrated. Being forewarned is
being forearmed.
It’s easy to get lost in the details
of targets and depth-of-knowledge
levels. Moreover, history suggests that
a standard-by-standard approach to
teaching and learning does not work.
Instead, our advice, based on research
on learning, is to focus on the big
ideas of what students are expected to
accomplish, the major claims about
student learning that the new tests
seek to substantiate. Consider how
specific standards and evidence targets
can be integrated in the development
and demonstration of these major
competencies through appropriate per-
formance tasks.
Finally, it’s worth underscoring that
our analysis is based on consortia
plans. Operational tests will be fielded
in about a year. Time will tell how well
current ambitions come to fruition, a
situation we’ll continue to monitor.EL
Assess the Common Core online.
References
Herman, J. L. (2004). The effects of testing Guide instruction with quarterly Benchmarks
ƒ
on instruction. In S. Fuhrman & R.
Elmore (Eds.), Redesigning accountability and targeted Testlets. Create your own
(pp. 141–166). New York: Teachers assessments with items from our Item Bank.
College Press.
Herman, J. L., & Linn, R. L. (2013). On ƒ
Rely on innovative item-authoring tools, real-
the road to assessing deeper learning: The
status of Smarter Balanced and PARCC
time reports, and flexible security options.
assessment consortia. (CRESST Report
823). Los Angeles: University of Cali- ƒ
Equip students with all they need
fornia, National Center for Research to succeed on a student-
on Evaluation, Standards, and Student friendly platform.
Testing (CRESST).
Mislevy, R., Steinberg, L., & Almond, R.
(1999). Evidence-centered assessment
Transform classroom
design. Princeton, NJ: ETS. instruction with new
Webb, N. L., Alt, M., Ely, R., & items and assessments
Vesperman, B. (2005). Web alignment
tool (WAT): Training manual 1.1. built to the Common
Madison: Wisconsin Center of Edu- Core, designed to
cation Research, University of Wis-
consin. Retrieved from http://wat foster success.
.wceruw.org
Yuan, K., & Le, V. (2012). Estimating the
percentage of students who were tested on
cognitively demanding items through the
state achievement tests (WR-967-WFHF).
Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Joan Herman (herman@cse.ucla.edu)

is Director Emeritus and currently senior
research scientist at the National Center
for Research on Evaluation, Standards,
and Student Testing (CRESST) at the Learn more at
University of California at Los Angeles.
Robert Linn is Distinguished Professor
measuredprogress.org/ascd
Emeritus of Education at the University
of Colorado at Boulder and co-director of ©2014 Measured Progress. All rights reserved. Measured Progress COMMON CORE
and its logo are trademarks of Measured Progress, Inc.
CRESST.

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 37
 Art-Integrated
Lesson Plans Inspire
Hands-On Learning


  


 
    
 

 

 
  
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Student-Owned
Homework
By using homework for practice in self-assessment and complex
thinking skills, we can put students in charge of the learning process.
Cathy Vatterott
O
n a warm summer
evening, watching the
crowd at a street festival,
I was fascinated by a
toddler who was learning
to walk. He was moving enthusias-
tically and enjoying his progress. His
method was quite comical, more arms
than legs, propelling himself along as
if he were rowing a boat. His parents
watched with delight, realizing that
form and grace didn’t matter, but
mastery did. They were beaming with
pride. No one said, “Bad baby, you’re
not doing it right!”
No one tells a baby how to walk.
No one moves his legs for him. We
encourage him to stand, applaud his
first step, and tell him it’s OK when he
falls.
I thought of all the imperfections
we accept from children as they learn
to do things like feed themselves and
dress themselves. We instinctively
realize that messy high chairs and
snow boots worn in summer are less
important than mastery of the skill and
the pride that comes with it. We fully
© FLORIN PRUNOIU/CORBIS
understand the freedom that is nec-
essary for children to take ownership
of their accomplishments.
Yet when it comes to academic
learning, we seem to discount the
importance of that freedom for
learners to design their own methods,
that forgiveness of form and grace, and
that acceptance of failure. We often
forget to appreciate the inborn desire
for mastery or to trust a child’s self-
knowledge of how to get there. And so
we prescribe one method of learning,
assign one task as homework, and
simply require students to comply.
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 39
And, voilà, learning occurs.
Except when it doesn’t.
Changing Our
Homework Mind-Set
The requirements of the
Common Core State Standards
are forcing us to rethink who’s
in charge of learning. The new
standards call for deep thinking
and application of complex
knowledge. These skills cannot
be “taught” in the same way
rote knowledge is taught—
they must be developed and
constructed in ways that are
meaningful to the learner. To
reach that goal, we must change
our mind-set and overhaul the
practice of homework.
The traditional focus of
homework has been on
working—students must com-
plete all the assigned work
(often low-level rote tasks)
by a specified time, or risk
punishment. Now, the focus must shift
to demonstrating complex and sophis-
ticated learning.
So rote practice is out; task com-
plexity is in. Students don’t memorize
spelling words; they use them to write
declarative essays. They don’t read a
section of assigned text; they apply
complex reading strategies to a text of
their choice. They don’t complete 40
essentially identical math problems
reinforcing the same skill; they apply
math skills to new problems.
For some students, this will be a
novel experience. It’s as though they
have been working on an assembly
line, putting widgets into holes, and
now we are asking them to build the
car. For students who were pretty
good at widgets, this shift to taking
control of their learning can be dis-
orienting. If they’ve been comfortable
with rote homework tasks, they may
not know how to tackle higher-level
40 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
tasks. Given a synthesis-level task
that requires thought and analysis,
they may ask, “Where do I find the
answer?”
This focus on learning, not working,
will also change the way we view
mistakes. With traditional homework
practices, it’s “one and done.” Students
have one opportunity to get it right,
and if they fail to understand a concept
the first time, they are penalized with
a poor grade. The practice of checking
homework for correctness and
assigning a grade discourages students
from persisting in learning (Varlas,
2013). “I didn’t do it—it was a stupid
assignment” often means “I couldn’t
do it—it made me feel stupid.”
Our new homework practices must
reinforce the mind-set that struggle
and persistence are part of the learning
process (Tough, 2012). We do this by
treating homework as a way to obtain
formative feedback about learning, not
as a final assessment of learning.
Once we remove the threat of
the bad grade, we free students
to embrace the struggle that is
necessary for deeper learning
(Zmuda, 2008). We let students
know that “not getting it” is
OK, that failure is crucial to
learning, and that teachers will
support them in the struggle.
In short, we invite them to take
ownership of their learning.
New Purposes, New Tasks
Homework that gives students
ownership serves two purposes:
© RICHARD NOWITZ/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY/CORBIS
to check for understanding
and to practice the application
of complex skills. The first
purpose, checking for under-
standing, is so crucial that it
precludes the use of homework
simply as preparation (for
example, reading the chapter to
prepare for the next day’s dis-
cussion) unless that preparation
includes formative assessment.
For example, in Rachel Dohrmann’s
7th grade math class at Parkway
Northeast Middle School in Chester-
field, Missouri, students receive a set
of notes with guidelines to accompany
the video lecture they watch for
homework. Students self-diagnose
their level of understanding of the
homework lecture, putting themselves
in the red group (“I’m lost”); the
yellow group (“I need help”); or the
green group (“Bring it!”). Rachel pro-
vides differentiated instruction to these
three groups in the next day’s lesson.
At Mason Ridge Elementary School
in Town and Country, Missouri,
instructional coach Deborah Poslosky
took the Common Core 3rd grade
writing standard, “Write opinion
pieces on topics or texts, supporting
a point of view with reasons,” and
created a checklist of subskills that
would demonstrate mastery of the
standard: introducing the topic; stating
an opinion; providing a concluding
statement; using linking words or
phrases (because, therefore, and so on);
creating an organizational structure;
and providing reasons to support the
opinions. As part of their homework,
students used this checklist to self-
assess their writing assignments.
At Fox Middle School in Arnold,
Missouri, Eva Rudolph’s 7th grade
math students keep an interactive
record of their progress. For example,
when they studied the properties of
numbers (associative, commutative,
We often forget to appreciate the inborn
desire for mastery or to trust a child’s
self-knowledge of how to get there.
distributive, and identity), students
glued their class notes on the right-
hand side of a notebook spread as
foldables (graphic organizers in which
notes about each topic are written
under a flap labeling the topic). One
student’s class note under the flap for
the associative property read, Changing
the grouping of numbers in a sum or
product does not change the answer.
On the left-hand side of the notebook
spread, the student wrote the learning
goal, I can use properties to write
equivalent expressions. For homework,
she completed a “What I Learned”
section—I learned that you can use
the associative property to regroup
numbers—and created a proof to dem-
onstrate her understanding—5 + (7 +
3) = (5 + 7) + 3.
Feedback as a Two-Way Street
When students understand that
learning is a process that occurs over
time and homework is not a final
assessment of learning, feedback
becomes a two-way conversation
between student and teacher. It pro-
vides an opportunity for students to
think and talk about their learning
and for the teacher to get inside their
heads. This recurring, nonthreatening
feedback encourages students to
persist in learning. As some teachers
say, “You just don’t know it yet.”
In Tracy LaRose’s 7th grade science
class at Fox Middle School, students
have several choices of projects, such
as calendars or mobiles, that they can
complete to show they understand
the phases of the moon. When they
turn in their project, if it doesn’t dem-
onstrate mastery of this knowledge,
Tracy asks questions like, “Why did
you put the moon there?” Depending
on their answers, she directs them
to specific resources to help them
improve their understanding so they
can revise the project.
When Cryslynn Billingsley at
Parkway Northeast Middle School
introduced compound sentences to
her 7th graders, they “panicked.” So
she created a set of notes that included
definitions of complex sentences and
of independent, dependent, and sub-
ordinate clauses, with examples of
each. For homework, students read the
notes and put a check mark by what
they understood, put a question mark
by what they “maybe understood,”
and circled or highlighted parts that
were completely foreign to them. This
self-assessment served as a pretest. The
next day, Cryslynn grouped students
based on their level of understanding
for differentiated instruction. She gave
a series of homework assignments on
compound sentences and provided
feedback until she felt students had
mastered the concept.
Practice in Self-Assessment
Once we have established that mis-
takes in learning are necessary and
acceptable, we make it safe for stu-
dents to self-assess. The more they
self-assess, the more they develop
ownership of their learning. But many
students have no experience in self-
assessment, so we need to teach them
how to do it and give them practice in
the classroom.
For example, Cryslynn Billingsley
created eight writing samples and gave
students a rubric. Working in groups,
students evaluated the writing samples
and rated which samples were a 1, 2,
3, or 4 on the rubric. Then the groups
defended their ratings. This practice
prepared students to use the rubric to
assess their own writing.
Part of the self-assessment process
is answering the question, “How do
I learn best?” Teachers need to give
students opportunities to think about
their learning and to create strategies
that work for them.
Jeff Harding, an algebra teacher at
Mundelien High School in Mundelien,
Illinois, doesn’t assign homework.
He asks his students, “Which way do
you want to learn this?” He makes a
number of resources available online—
video lectures, Khan Academy videos,
and web-based activities. The students
then choose the method of homework
that they prefer. In Jeff’s classroom,
there is no seating chart. Students
sit with peers who are working on
what they’re working on. Students
who don’t demonstrate mastery of a
concept the first time they’re assessed
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 41
 summative assessment, student goal
FIGURE 1. Students Submit a “Ticket” to Request a Reassessment
setting, and student-led conferences.

Reassessment Ticket Learning to Walk

Name_________________________________ Today’s date____________________ As students take ownership of
learning, they become engaged and
Instructional Objective___________________________________________________
productive. They become competent
What steps have you taken to be prepared for a reassessment? at self-diagnosis, and teachers see the
Evidence (such as additional notes or extra problems) must be attached. evidence. As one teacher explained, “I
know they are getting there when they
Check all that apply
pinpoint where they need work and
Q FAST tutoring use the language of the standards.”
Q Additional practice problems When teachers hear students say, “I
Q Met with teacher or tutor
need to know more subordinating
conjunctions” or “Integers are why
Q Written summary (explain everything you did wrong and show that you I can’t solve equations,” they know
can create/solve similar problems correctly) their students are using homework as
Date and time I would like to reassess_____________________________________ self-assessment.
If we want students to take charge
of their learning, we must trust their
on it can take a reassessment after first the end of the semester, they pick ability to do so. That leap of faith can
completing a “reassessment ticket” their three weakest goals and choose be scary. Just like we do when we’re
(see fig. 1). a homework project to complete that helping children learn to walk, we
Another important self-assessment will deepen their understanding of must let go of their hands, be encour-
ability is tracking your own progress these concepts. aging, help them when they fall, and
toward mastery. We need to give When 5th graders at Mason Ridge celebrate the small victories on the
students experience in charting their Elementary School write short stories path to learning independence.EL
progress on standards, conducting for homework, they use an interactive Author’s Note: All Common Core stan-
student-led conferences to demon- checklist to track their progress toward dards are from National Governors Associ-
strate their learning, and setting their meeting the Common Core standard, ation Center for Best Practices & Council
own goals for improvement. “Write narratives to develop real or of Chief State School Officers. (2010).
Ashley Brumbaugh, a kindergarten imagined experiences or events using Common Core State Standards for English
Language Arts and Literacy in Writing.
teacher at Rock Island Academy in effective technique, descriptive details, Washington, DC: Authors.
Rock Island, Illinois, has her stu- and clear event sequences.” For each
dents create data folders with graphs component skill on the checklist (such References
showing their progress month by as “I include dialogue that is mean- Tough, R. (2012). How children succeed:
month on the number of sight words, ingful and shows responses of char- Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of
character. New York: Houghton Mifflin
letters, and numbers they know and acters to situations”), they either state Harcourt.
their mastery of math concepts. evidence that they have demonstrated Varlas, L. (2013). How we got grading
Eva Rudolph gives her 7th graders the skill or explain why they have not wrong, and what to do about it. Edu-
two math concept quizzes a week, yet achieved that part of the standard. cation Update, 55(10), 1, 6–7.
each covering six goals. Students To make assessment easier for the Zmuda, A. (2008). Springing into active
learning. Educational Leadership, 66(3),
keep a record of their scores—from teacher, they also highlight the part 38–42.
1(lowest) to 4 (highest)—so they of their short story that provides their
know when they have mastered each evidence. Each time they submit their
goal. When they have earned 4s for a story for assessment, they use a dif- Cathy Vatterott (vatterott@umsl
.edu) is a professor at the University of
goal (for example, “I can solve multi- ferent color highlighter so the teacher Missouri–St. Louis. She is the author of
step equations”) on two quizzes, they can identify the latest evidence. These Rethinking Homework: Best Practices
can skip the questions pertaining to checklists serve multiple purposes— that Support Diverse Needs (ASCD,
that goal on the next quiz. Toward student self-assessment, formative and 2009).

42 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

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 The Problem with
Penalties
Punitive policies— Q Care. The penalty must

evoke concern on the part of the

whether for not learner. Clearly, my son didn’t
brushing your teeth care enough about the penalty;
he was willing to give up a
or for incomplete quarter seven nights in a row.
Q Aim. The penalty structure
homework—are must align with the ultimate
not very effective. objectives of the penalty giver
(likely the teacher). I wanted to
Positive guidelines encourage my son to brush his
teeth, not increase my personal
work better. wealth.
Q Reduction of undesirable
Myron Dueck behavior. The penalty must
result in a marked decrease in

M
y wish that my the number of times you need to
7-year-old son enforce it. In the case of my son,
would take the introducing the penalty actually
initiative to increased the frequency of the
© ANDERSEN ROSS/BLEND IMAGES/CORBIS

brush his teeth infraction. (For seven nights in

coincided with his interest in a row, he wouldn’t brush.)
collecting quarters. Seizing Q Empowerment. The

upon this opportunity, I made penalized person must have

a rule that I was certain would
encourage him to faithfully
brush. I boldly announced one
evening that it would cost him 25
cents every time he forgot to brush his
teeth at bedtime. The echo of my pro-
tocol was still bouncing off the walls as
he dashed off to what I thought was a
good bout of oral hygiene. He rounded
the corner with seven quarters,
slapped them on the counter, and
declared, “There, I’m good for a week.”
Son: 1, Dad: 0.
Parenting has taught me something
about what works—and doesn’t—
when it comes to conjuring up pen-
alties. Whether at home or school,
influencing change in human behavior
seems to hinge upon four simple
rules, which I call the CARE guide-
lines. Even the most well-intended
penalty often misses the mark on these
four rules, and if any one of them is
lacking, the penalty loses effectiveness.
My teeth-brushing penalty failed
miserably when measured by these
rules:
control over the factors that
lead to the infraction and be
capable of understanding the
situation. Likely, my son failed to
understand the long-term implications
of tooth care and wasn’t in a position
to make an empowered decision.
Why Grading Homework
Fails the Test
Grading homework, especially
applying penalties for incom-
plete homework, is ineffective for
numerous reasons, most of which
hinge on the four rules. I stopped

44 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

grading standardized homework seven
years ago and wish I’d abandoned this
misguided routine sooner.
When deciding whether to complete
homework, many students, especially
those most at risk, don’t care about a
potential zero. Faced with the choice
to complete an assignment or take a
zero, far too many students opt for the
grading hit; thus, they render assign-
ments “optional.” In these instances,
grading homework becomes a measure
of behavior and compliance rather
than of learning. Can’t you recall stu-
dents asking, “What’s my grade if I
don’t do the assignment?” or “Can I
just take a zero on that?”
The usual aim for assigning
homework and providing feedback
is to further student learning and
understanding. Unfortunately,
grading standardized homework
doesn’t always further learning, and
it routinely sabotages the accuracy
of existing grades. Homework grades
leave students overconfident or frus-
trated. Those who rely heavily on the
assistance of others will likely have
inflated homework grades and crash
on the corresponding unit test. On the
other hand, students who don’t have a
stable home environment in which to
complete homework inevitably suffer
from deflated grades; they can’t deliver
work reflecting the extent to which
they understand the material. Many
poverty-affected students struggle just
to make it to school, only to be faced
with a grading penalty for incomplete
homework.
Penalties don’t reduce homework
avoidance. In my experience, the
number of grading penalties a student
incurs has little effect on his or her
future homework behavior. I’ve seen
students on both ends of the academic
spectrum completely shirk homework.
For some struggling learners in
particular, it’s nearly 100 percent
predictable that they won’t do their
homework regardless of the severity
of the penalty. Conversely, one of the
most proficient students I ever taught
also ignored my assignments. Every
history test he completed was excep-
tional. If the homework was intended
to further understanding, he didn’t
need it. Perhaps he opted for a zero
on every standardized homework
assignment on principle.
Many students simply aren’t
empowered to finish homework
because they don’t have the resources
to do so. Poverty is just one of many
hurdles to homework completion
thousands of students face; others
The number of grading penalties
a student incurs has little effect on
his or her future homework behavior.
include violence in the home, utility
disconnection, and low self-esteem or
negative school views passed on from
parents. And few situations are more
frustrating for learners than to be pun-
ished for something stemming from
variables beyond their control.
During one of my sessions at a
school in Kentucky, a teacher shared,
“Three of my students were recently
evicted and are living in a camper
with no electricity. Is it still called
homework if you live in a dark RV?”
An educator in Washington told me
of a low-income student who waited
for her father to get home so she could
complete her homework. She didn’t
need his help, but she did need the
light from the headlights of his truck.
A Word About Effort
Many teachers assign and grade
homework out of a pressing desire to
instill a good work ethic in learners.
What these educators look for in
homework completion is actually
effort rather than evidence of learning.
But accurate measurement of learning
is compromised when teachers collect
data about effort rather than about
what students have learned. Years of
graded homework results may teach
students that giving the impression
of exerting effort yields a better grade
than does actually striving to learn.
Teachers who factor effort into
the final grade are likely including a
variable that is neither accurate nor
asked for by governing education
authorities. As important as effort is to
a productive society, few courses have
it listed as a learning outcome.
Alternatives to
Grading Homework
It should be clear by now that grading
homework completion is often a
measure of compliance and socio-
economic opportunity rather than
learning. If a punitive grading routine,
such as applying a zero to incomplete
homework, actually met all four
penalty rules for a certain group of stu-
dents, that group would be made up of
academically successful students from
supportive homes who were extrinsi-
cally and intrinsically motivated by
grades. I’d rather build a universally
appropriate system that both supports
learning and measures it.
As a history teacher, I use prac-
tices that avoid penalties and make
homework completion more personal,
meaningful, and tied to achievement—
and I’ve seen colleagues adopt similar
practices. Here are some examples.
In-Class Quizzes
Ben Arcuri, a chemistry teacher in
Penticton, British Columbia, has
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 45
developed a system of homework-
supported quizzes that are person-
alized, efficient, and bulletproof to
the perils of misrepresentation. At the
conclusion of an in-class lesson, Ben
suggests homework questions and
activities that reinforce the concepts
covered in class. Students are given
time in class to ask questions and start
on the suggested homework activities.
At the start of the next class, stu-
dents take a short quiz that’s based on
the concept they were encouraged to
practice at home. Immediately after
Ben collects the quizzes, the class goes
over the correct solutions to that quiz;
most students can determine through
this review the extent to which they
mastered the concept. If a student
knows he or she failed to meet the
learning objective, that learner can
request a “re-quiz” before even seeing
his or her grade. The majority of these
re-quizzes are completed the next day
after specific homework questions
have been practiced.
Ben sometimes opens his room at
lunch or after school to students who
still need assistance. During these
tutorial-like sessions, Ben not only
reteaches, but might also review with
students the quizzes completed that
day and give personalized feedback to
those who need it. Ben’s students track
both their quiz and re-quiz scores on a
customized tracking sheet. These quiz
results correspond to a homework
completion sheet also managed by
each student so students can identify
the specific homework problems that
will facilitate their success on each
concept-specific quiz.
Teachers Ken Bauer and Hilda
Matias of Valley High School in Las
Vegas, Nevada, use carefully crafted
in-class quizzes to identify the
strengths and weaknesses of their
Algebra I students, with the help of
technology. The quizzes are graded
instantly by a card reader, and the
ingenuity of their question design
46 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
My student said,
“Penalties have never
really motivated me, but
a chance to improve—
that’s motivating.”
enables the teachers to immediately
identify where student weaknesses
lie. These two teachers have adjoining
classrooms, and after a quiz is admin-
istered in each room, students report
to one of the two classrooms—for
reteaching or enrichment—depending
on their individual quiz results.
Why This Works. Rather than fail on
the four rules, these in-class solutions
are effective for a number of reasons.
Students get the results of their
quizzes frequently and in a timely, per-
sonalized way, which is empowering.
Because all the work is done in the
classroom, the potential for cheating
and misrepresentations is minimal, so
quiz results are an accurate measure of
learning.
Incompletes and Interventions
Assessment and grading strategies
geared toward enabling students to
show what they know are much more
effective than penalties are in pro-
moting student learning. As one of
my students informed me, “Penalties
have never really motivated me, but a
chance to improve—that’s motivating.”
One way I allow for improvement
and avoid resorting to the finality of
a zero on any homework assignment
is through temporarily rendering the
assignment, as well as a student’s
overall course standing, “Incomplete.”
My first step is to establish a specific
date for when an assignment is due.
Students who miss the deadline should
immediately begin planning for its
completion. I have each student who
doesn’t turn something in complete
my Incomplete Assignment Form
(fig. 1), which was born out of my
frustration when I would grade work
at home and be unable to recall why a
particular student’s work was missing.
The first part of the form asks stu-
dents to indicate why the assignment
is incomplete, and the second part
reminds students of the many inter-
ventions that are available to support
them in completing the missing work.1
Whatever mutual agreement the
student and I reach in terms of how
and when the work will be completed,
the interventions need to begin imme-
diately. Don’t wait until the end of
the term for a tidal wave of missing
assignments. Students who promise
they’ll complete the assignment “in a
day or two” are allowed to prove their
sincerity, but if this time period proves
insufficient, I mandate one or more
of our high school’s interventions. It’s
ideal if schools provide homework
completion centers for students to
attend at lunch or after school, or even
a “Saturday School.” Whatever the
structure, the key is to have an adult
with expertise present to manage the
environment and assist students.
The crucial element of this system
is in the power of the Incomplete
standing. Once a student has been
offered a (well-supported) oppor-
tunity to complete the assignment, the
grade-book record of the assignment
remains Incomplete until it’s handed
in. Most important, the entire course
standing of that particular student can
be posted as Incomplete—whether
for a parent inquiring about his or her
child’s current course standing or on a
class list of grades.2
Why This Works. Students want to
have an overall grade in the course;
therefore, they care about changing the
incomplete standing into a numeric or
letter grade. The results of completed
assignments are more accurate than
zeros in measuring student learning.
 owes much to the work of Naryn
FIGURE 1. Incomplete Assignment Form
Searcy, an English teacher at Princess
Name: ______________________________ Date: ___________________________
Margaret Secondary School in British
Columbia. She shared with me a
Missing assignment: ___________________________________________________ template that essentially involved
Reason(s) for missing the due date: two columns, one for listing the
Qschool-based sports/extracurricular activity learning outcomes of a project and
Qjob/work requirements the other for indicating how each
Qdifficulty with material/lack of understanding would be addressed. This template
Qprocrastination was effective for my most successful
Qheavy course load students, but I made adaptations for
Qsocial event(s) those who were most at-risk. Some
Qclub or group event out of school struggling learners found it difficult
Qother to both identify and write out the
Details: ______________________________________________________________
learning outcomes and link these
______________________________________________________________________ outcomes to their project elements.
______________________________________________________________________ The amount of writing derailed my
most vulnerable students.
Date assignment is expected to be completed: ____________________________
In the left column, the teacher lists
Interventions/support required: all the potential learning outcomes
Qextra study/home-based effort that a student might incorporate into a
Qhomework club project; students choose from the list
Qextra help from teacher what learning outcomes they want to
Qtutorial pursue with this project. Students can
Quse of planner be both informed and reminded of the
Qtime management required elements of the learning unit.
Qcounselor visit For instance, the project planning
Qother sheet I created for a unit on World
Details: ______________________________________________________________ War II included these learning out-
______________________________________________________________________ comes, among others: “Compare the
______________________________________________________________________ nature of democratic and totalitarian
states and their impact on individuals”
and “Explain the significance of key
military events in World War II.” The
This matches my aim to reflect learning is used as a portal for incor- best projects tend to focus on fewer
learning through sound data. I’ve porating student interests, the learning outcomes and delve into greater detail.
found that when students are asked potential is incredible. Traditionally, The middle column provides space
to show what they know rather than it’s been the teacher’s job to focus on for the student to consider how these
accept a punitive grading measure, the salient learning outcomes of the outcomes will be addressed. Students
they naturally experience more project, while the student fixates on can plan to demonstrate their learning
success—which leads to a reduction in the final product. It’s high time that through diverse avenues. Projects in
homework-skipping behaviors. Thus, we placed the student at the wheel of my class have involved pottery, drama,
even at-risk learners with little home this process. When students pursue song, art, videography, photography,
support feel empowered to improve projects connected to their passions, and plastic models, to name a few. The
their learning potential. with learning outcomes they help third column includes the student’s
choose, they become so motivated to plan for essential details of the project;
Personalized Projects complete assignments that using pen- this is a crucial piece in ensuring
Choice, purpose, and ownership are alties to push them into completion that the student includes detailed
key elements in determining the extent becomes unnecessary. knowledge and skills that correspond
to which students will engage in the The Project Planning Sheet I use to the content of the unit.
learning process. When project-based (see www.ascd.org/el0314dueck1) This planning sheet is highly useful

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 47
to the teacher tasked with grading a
creative, multidimensional project.
With it, the student essentially begins
the grading process by determining the
standards by which his or her work
will be measured. The assessment
should hinge entirely on the extent
to which these learning outcomes are
met, with anecdotal commentary rec-
ognizing effort, care, and creativity.
Why This Works. Students are
excited and eager to embark on a
project involving personal interests
and style. Their care and attention to
detail are natural by-products of this
individualized process. The grades
derived from this process match the
teacher’s aim to measure learning
solely based on established learning
outcomes. Negative behaviors like pro-
crastination and cheating are greatly
reduced when students are meaning-
fully engaged in the learning process.
Finally, students become empowered
through personal ownership and
control over their learning.
Student Ownership
Trumps Penalties
Penalties that are administered with
little regard for each student’s indi-
vidual needs are antiquated and
unprofessional. People demand that
doctors gear solutions toward their
personal health—shouldn’t educators
gear solutions toward students’ per-
sonal learning? My experiences at
home, in school, and in my com-
munity reinforce my belief that choice
and ownership trump penalty struc-
tures every time when it comes to
empowering young people. Once edu-
cators open a broader space for stu-
dents to show what they know, we can
stop leaning on penalties that neither
motivate students nor measure
learning well.EL
1
Teachers might also use my Late
Assignment Report (available at www
.ascd.org/el0314dueck2), which shows
both learner and teacher which inter-
ventions proved successful in getting late
homework done.
2
Some jurisdictions may not allow an
Incomplete to be printed in the report
card, but this policy can be challenged.
In one school in which I operated, we
were allowed to have an Incomplete on
the report card, but after two weeks we
needed to convert it into a numerical
value. In many cases, 14 days was enough
time to resolve the situation.
Myron Dueck (myrondueck@gmail.com)
is vice principal and teacher at Sum-
merland Secondary School in School
District 67, British Columbia.

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How
We Drive
Students to
CHEAT
Instead of bemoaning the fact that
students cheat, we need to ask how
our instructional practices may be
encouraging them to do it.
Cris Tovani
An acquaintance recently told me about the following con-
versation she had had with her 11th grade son.
MOM: How did your U.S. history test go today?
SON: I think I did really well. I felt like I got almost every-
thing right, but the good thing was that I sat next to Anthony.
Ms. Mandry gave us two different tests, but I was able to figure
out her pattern, and then I got about 10 answers off Anthony. I
mostly had them right anyway, but that definitely helped.
MOM: I’m not so sure I want you to be telling me about how
well you did because you cheated off Anthony. I’d rather you do
well because you know the material.
SON: But I mostly did well on my own, and you don’t know
how many different skills I had to use to figure out that, like,
number 37 on my test was number 13 on Anthony’s test! I had
50 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
to use deductive reasoning and finding a pattern and all kinds
of really important skills. I think you should be proud of me!
Proud? I doubt it. When kids cheat, we usually feel
betrayed, or we blame them for being lazy. Sometimes we
even attack their character. But just like many adults, kids
who cheat have rational reasons for cheating.
Students who cheat lack something. Usually they lack a
sense of the relevance of what they’re learning, or know-
how, or timely feedback. Recognizing why students cheat
can help us make a few instructional shifts that will thwart
cheating, promote real learning instead of task completion,
and increase the chances that our assessments will provide
accurate information about student learning.
Lack of Relevance
Students aren’t the only ones who cheat. Adults do it, too.
They fudge their way through onerous pages of forms or
claim they forgot to attach a document to buy a bit more
time. When adults cheat, their excuse is often that their time
is too valuable to waste or that it’s not that big a deal. They
can’t possibly spend time messing around doing things that
have no authenticity or relevance. Finding shortcuts is a
strategy that helps them negotiate their busy lives.
Kids are the same way. They hate wasting time doing
things they deem useless. When students don’t see how the

When kids cheat, we
usually feel betrayed, or we
blame them for being lazy.
content they’re learning is connected to their lives, cheating
comes easy. When they perceive tasks as busywork, they
look for shortcuts. I can just hear the 11th grader in that
opening conversation saying to his mom, “It’s not like I’m
ever going to use this stuff again.”
So we teachers need to create authentic, relevant learning
tasks and help students understand why the content
matters. For example, when my students read Tim O’Brien’s
powerful Vietnam War narrative The Things They Carried
(Mariner Books, 2009), I work to write provocative guiding
questions that connect the book’s themes with current
events and the students’ lives:
Q How does war affect individuals and society?
Q Do the benefits of enlisting in the military outweigh the
risks of war?
Q Should military service be com-
pulsory or voluntary?
Q How does the emotional baggage
we “carry” affect our view of the mil-
itary and U.S. involvement in current
conflicts?
Students often find these ques-
tions deeply engaging. But to develop
meaningful answers, the students have
to put in some hard work, not only
reading the book, but also reading
lots of essays and nonfiction to build
their background knowledge. I can’t
expect them to do all this work just for
a grade; they need someone to share
their thinking with.
Thus, giving students an audience
© JLP/JOSE LUIS PELAEZ/CORBIS
to whom they can demonstrate their
learning is another way to create
authenticity. So at the end of the
unit on The Things They Carried, my
students write a commentary to the
Denver Post discussing one of the
guiding questions. Even though none
of the commentaries have been published to date, students
feel empowered because they are writing to an audience
bigger than their teacher.
They also host a 90-minute luncheon for military stake-
holders. Their job for this final project is to converse with
people who have direct involvement with the military,
including enlisted soldiers and officers, their spouses and
parents, veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress dis-
order, and social workers who support these veterans. In
engaging with these stakeholders, students aren’t expected
to find the “right answers” to the guiding questions; they
are expected to share the well-informed perspectives on war
they have gained from the unit of study and to learn from
others who may have differing views.
Students need to know that the content we’re teaching
is connected to the world outside school. If we pose
thoughtful questions and give students an audience for
their learning, they’re less likely to feel that what we’re
teaching is a waste of time—and they won’t be so inclined
to cheat.
Lack of Know-How
Sometimes teachers feel that they have to be the fount
of all knowledge, talking at students to “give” them that
knowledge. Unfortunately, lectures rarely give students
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 51
insight into how the teacher has
constructed meaning. To them, the
teacher may appear to be a magician
who has some secret way of knowing.
Students may be tempted to cheat
if they think knowledge is not acces-
sible to everyone and therefore only
some people will figure it out. They
don’t realize there is a process behind
the teacher’s thinking—a process that
they, too, can learn.
Case in point: When a class studies
The Catcher in the Rye (Little, Brown
and Company, 1951), the symbolism
of Holden Caulfield’s red hunting
cap is a common subject for a dis-
cussion question. For students who

have limited experience examining
the writer’s craft, pulling the symbolic
meaning of the red hunting cap out
of their proverbial magician’s hat is
nearly impossible. How in the world,
from just reading the work, is an ado-
lescent supposed to know what J. D.
Salinger thought when he wrote The
Catcher in the Rye? The student almost
certainly doesn’t know—and in most
cases, when the teacher first read the
novel, he or she didn’t know either.
What’s important is not helping
students understand the symbolic
meaning of the red hunting cap;
rather, it’s showing students how to
examine the writer’s craft to construct
meaning. The power of the teaching
and learning that’s going on here lies
in showing students how to recognize
a symbol and then infer what it might
mean as it recurs in the novel. Thus,
students need the teacher to model
how he or she notices the circum-
stances surrounding the appearance
of the red cap. (For example, the
teacher might think aloud to show
students how she notices when the
cap appears and what causes Holden
to don the cap.) When kids see how
an expert constructs meaning, they are
empowered to try doing the same.
As veteran teachers, it’s easy for us
to forget what it was like learning the
material the first time around. Some-
times we skip steps or assume the
kids know more than they do. When
we forget to show students how we
construct meaning, we inadvertently
encourage them to cheat. When we
give them the impression that we value
the right answer more than critical
thinking, we drive them even closer
to the precipice. They give up because
they don’t know the magic formula for
getting to the answer—and they head
for SparkNotes or some other source
that does.
Lack of Feedback and Time
People cheat when they have too
much to do and too little time to do it.
When teachers feel this time pressure,
we sometimes blast through the cur-
riculum, modeling for students that
they can rush through it, too. Some-
times students misinterpret the speed
with which we deliver information as
proof that the content is unimportant.
Marisol, a 10th grader, writes in her
journal, “I don’t have time to really
understand the information we are
© BEYOND/CORBIS
learning in science. It can’t be that
important if the teacher is only
spending one class period on it.”
When teachers feel pressured by
high-stakes assessments, they are
sometimes driven to cover the content
instead of giving students opportu-
nities to wrestle with it. In extreme
cases, the pressure to produce results
has led principals and higher-ups to
cheat by doctoring test scores, fudging
data, and manipulating graduation
rates. At the very least, this kind of
time pressure can make it difficult for
teachers to give students the individual
help and feedback they need—which
is especially unfortunate because
research says that feedback is one of
the most effective ways to improve
learning (Hattie, 2009).
The lack of such individual
feedback, combined with the feeling
that one low test score or poorly done
writing assignment can be deleterious
to their grade point average, can lead
students to cheat. Whitman, an 11th
grader, writes, “If I don’t know the
material or how to write a paper the
way the teacher wants, I have to cheat.

52 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

When the teacher doesn’t have time
to help me, what else can I do? I can’t
afford to get a bad grade that might
keep me from getting into college.”
I remember feeling the same way
in high school chemistry. I always did
the work for the chemistry labs, but
I struggled when it came to writing
the lab report conclusions. Each time
my reports were returned, the teacher
deducted points but provided no
feedback. I read the textbook. I went
in for extra help. But I still didn’t
understand how to write a lab report
correctly. When I didn’t know what
else to do, I cheated by copying the lab
report conclusion of a friend. I didn’t
feel good about it, but I did what I had
to do to survive the class. If the teacher
had given me descriptive feedback on
what I did well and then suggested
some ways to do it better, my labs
would have improved and I probably
wouldn’t have self-selected myself out
of science classes.
Sue Brookhart (2008) writes,
“Feedback can lead to learning only if
the students have opportunities to use
it. One of the best ways you can help
students learn to use feedback is to
make sure you build in opportunities
for students to use it fairly soon after
they receive it” (p. 73). Doing this
takes time. It means that something
has to come off the plate. If we treat
covering content as more important
than giving students opportunities to
get feedback and improve, we push
students to take the easy way out—
especially if they don’t know what else
to do.
Shifting Our View of Learning
We can reduce the temptation for stu-
dents to cheat if we adjust the way we
define thinking and learning. We can
start by acknowledging that learning is
more than a grade or test score. Many
students know this. Jessica, a 12th
grader, writes in her response journal,
When students
perceive tasks
as busy work,
they look for
shortcuts.
“I cheat because in some classes
the grades don’t prove that I know
something.”
Thinking is messy. As educators,
we have to decide what we value and
then match our instructional and
assessment practices to those beliefs.
Do we want to get messy and let kids
wrestle with critical thinking? Or do
we want to keep things neat, going for
one right answer and preparing stu-
dents to shine on standardized assess-
ments? If it’s the former, we need to
make it clear to students through our
instructional activities and assessments
that we expect more from them than
regurgitating the “right” answers. We
also need to allow students to demon-
strate their understanding in ways that
fit their thinking. We owe it to our
students to give them more than one
way to share what they know. When
we don’t, we drive them to cheat.
Another important shift in mind-
set is in how we define the strategies
that students use to survive in school.
Instead of labeling collaboration as
cheating, we might build it into our
testing and evaluation processes,
letting kids talk and work through
problems with peers.
I can hear the critics now com-
plaining that we can’t allow stu-
dents to converse and collaborate in
testing situations because they aren’t
allowed to do so on standardized
assessments. But we know that in the
world outside school, collaboration
will be an essential skill for them.
As Tony Wagner (2008) writes, “I
have yet to talk to a recent graduate,
college teacher, community leader,
or business leader who said that not
knowing enough academic content
was a problem. In my interviews,
everyone stressed the importance
of critical thinking, communication
skills, and collaboration” (p. 25). If we
don’t give students opportunities in
school to collaborate and work with
others, we shouldn’t penalize them
and label them as cheaters for doing it
on their own.
Removing the Temptation
to Cheat
Students can always find ways to
cheat. Instead of bemoaning the fact
that kids cheat, we need to examine
our instructional practices to see
whether we’re actually driving them to
do it. By transforming our instruction
to promote more authentic,
empowered learning, we’ll be able to
accurately assess students’ learning
without the distortion that comes from
cheating.EL
References
Brookhart, S. (2008). How to give effective
feedback to your students. Alexandria,
VA: ASCD.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A syn-
thesis of over 800 meta-analysis relating
to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Wagner, T. (2008, October). Rigor
redefined. Educational Leadership, 60(2),
20–25.
Cris Tovani (ctovani@hotmail.com)
teaches English at Adams City High
School in Commerce City, Colorado.
She is the author of So What Do They
Really Know? Assessment That Informs
Teaching and Learning (Stenhouse Pub-
lishers, 2011).
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 53
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 The Common Core
Assessments:
What You Need to Know
Feeling anxious about the impending arrival of the
new standardized tests? Here are the basics.
Nancy Doorey
I
t’s spring 2014, and the two Common Core
assessment consortia are field-testing their new
English language arts and mathematics tests.
Soon, these will be the tests used to measure
student, school, and state performance on the
Common Core State Standards, so questions and con-
cerns abound. In this brief article, I’ll address three
of the most commonly raised questions about these
assessments.
When will the new assessments
Q roll out?
The summative assessments developed
by the two assessment consortia—the
Partnership for Assessment of Readi-
ness for College and Career (PARCC)
and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—
will be field-tested by some schools in spring 2014.
But the first time all students in consortia member
states will be required to take these tests for account-
ability purposes will be the 2014–15 school year.
In spring 2015, students in PARCC states will take
the new summative assessments in grades 3–11; stu-
dents in Smarter Balanced states will take them in
grades 3–8 and grade 11 unless the state or district
also requires assessments in grades 9 and 10.
How many hours will the tests
Q take to complete, and how will
the time be scheduled?
Both consortia’s summative assess-
ments will be administered during
the final three months of the school
year and are estimated to require 7–10 hours for both
English language arts and mathematics combined,
spread across multiple testing sessions. Although
there are differences across the two consortia in
assessment design, both will contain a performance-
based component and an end-of-year component.
Figures 1 and 2 (pp. 59–60) provide more detailed
information about what each of these components
will contain.
The PARCC Assessment Schedule
Schools in PARCC states will have two testing
windows, each a maximum of 20 school days. The
first window, which will occur after approximately
75 percent of the school year’s instruction, will be
used to administer the consortium’s performance-
based assessments. The second window, which will
occur after approximately 90 percent of instruction,
will be used to administer the end-of-year assess-
ments. States are working with schools and districts to
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 57
We should not underestimate the magnitude
of the change represented by the Common
Core State Standards and the new assessments.
identify the most appropriate 20-day
testing windows from a set of options
to ensure that all students have com-
pleted similar amounts of instruction
before testing begins.
Individual students will complete
their testing over a few days within
each schoolwide 20-day testing
window, depending on the school’s
technology capacity. The tests are
untimed, but the estimated total time
on task for combined English language
arts and mathematics assessments for
students in PARCC states are
Q Grade 3: eight hours.
Q Grades 4–5: nine hours and 20
minutes.
Q Grades 6–8: nine hours and 25
minutes.
Q Grade 9–10: nine hours and 45
minutes.
Q Grade 11: nine hours and 55
minutes.
The Smarter Balanced
Assessment Schedule
Schools in Smarter Balanced states will
administer both the performance task
component and a computer adaptive
assessment component during one
maximum 12-week testing window,
which will be scheduled within the
final 33 percent of instructional days
(within the final 20 percent for grade
11). Schools with the technology
capacity to do so may choose to use
shorter testing windows, placing the
performance tasks closer to the end of
the school year.
Students will participate in multiple
testing sessions for English language
arts and mathematics, although the
58 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
guidance and policies related to the
number of testing sessions for each
content area are yet to be established.
The estimated total testing time for
combined English language arts and
mathematics, spread over several days,
is as follows:
Q Grades 3–5: seven hours (includes
up to one hour of in-class activity).
Q Grades 6–8: seven hours and 30
minutes (includes up to one hour
Alternate Common Core
Assessment Consortia
In addition to the PARCC and
Smarter Balanced assessment con-
sortia, the following four consortia
have been established to design
alternative assessments for students
for whom the general assessments
may not be accessible or valid.
For students with significant cog-
nitive disabilities:
Q National Center and State Collab-
orative (NCSC): www.ncscpartners
.org
Q Dynamic Learning Maps Alternate
Assessment Consortium (DLM):
http://dynamiclearningmaps.org
For English language learners:
QAssessment Services Supporting
English Language Learners Through
Technology Systems Consortium
(ASSETS): http://assets.wceruw.org
QEnglish Language Proficiency
Assessment for the 21st Century
(ELPA21): www.ccsso.org/
Resources/Programs/ELPA21.html
of in-class activity).
Q Grade 11: eight hours and 30
minutes (includes up to one hour of
in-class activity).
The in-class activity time will be
used for the teacher to give an intro-
duction at the start of each of the two
performance tasks. These introduc-
tions will be carefully scripted to
ensure that all students receive the
same information.
What supports can
Q educators draw on
to help with the
transition to these
new assessments?
The two consortia—as
well as professional organizations,
nonprofits, and publishers—have
developed many supports to help
schools implement the Common Core
standards and the aligned assessments.
Here are a few noteworthy ones.
Both PARCC and Smarter Bal-
anced received supplemental grants
from the federal government to
support member states’ transition to
the Common Core State Standards,
and both have been using a portion
of those funds to train cadres of lead
teachers from each member state.
Cadre members are expected to
support implementation and provide
training within their states. Educators
should contact their district’s central
office to find out about state and local
training opportunities.
In addition, many online sources
offer high-quality, free materials for
both English language arts and math-
ematics. Here are a few.
Q The PARCC and Smarter Balanced
websites (www.parcconline.org and
www.smarterbalanced.org) contain
key supports for educators, including
documents that delineate the skills and
knowledge that will be emphasized
in the assessments (PARCC’s Model
 FIGURE 1. PARCC’s Nine Testing Sessions, Spread Across Two Testing Windows

Maximum 4-week window after Maximum 4-week window after

75% of instruction 90% of instruction

Performance-Based Assessment End-of-Year Assessment

English Language Number of testing sessions: 3 Number of testing sessions: 2

Arts/Literacy Assessments:
Assessments: Three tasks, in which stu-
dents must read one or more texts, answer • Multiple item types on fixed-form tests.
several short comprehension and vocabulary • Will focus on comprehending complex texts,
questions, and write an essay based on evi- including vocabulary interpretation and use, using
dence from the text(s). 4–5 texts.
• One literary analysis task. Scoring: Machine scored.
• One narrative writing task.
• One research simulation task.
Scoring: Combination of machine and human
scoring.

Mathematics Number of testing sessions: 2 Number of testing sessions: 2

Assessments:
• Will focus on the Major Content of the
grade/course as defined in the PARCC Model
Content Frameworks.
• Multistep, real-world problems will require
the application of key skills, processes and
practices.
Scoring: Combination of machine and human
scoring.
Assessments:
• Multiple item types on fixed-form tests.
• End-of-course assessments in grades 9–11, with
traditional and integrated mathematics sequences
supported.
Scoring: Machine scored.

Content Frameworks and Smarter Bal-

anced’s Content Specifications) and
sample items and tasks. Professional
development modules and model
instructional resources will be added
over time.
The Smarter Balanced website
includes online practice tests for
grades 3–11 (www.smarterbalanced
.org/pilot-test), which are open to all.
PARCC will provide practice tests
in spring 2014. These will enable
educators and students to become
familiar with the item types, level of
rigor, and computer interface for the
assessments.
Q Achieve the Core (www.achievethe
core.org). Developed by a nonprofit
The two consortia have developed many
supports to help schools implement the Common
Core State Standards and the aligned assessments.
with leadership from some of the This site contains highly detailed cur-
authors of the Common Core stan- riculum modules with mid-module
dards, this site offers free Common and end-of-module assessments, pro-
Core–aligned lessons, samples of fessional development kits for teachers
student work, assessment questions, and principals, a library of videos that
and professional development modules exemplify the shifts in instruction, and
to support the transition to the new a library of resources for families. All
standards. The site encourages edu- materials are free.
cators to “steal these tools and share By September 2014, both
them with others.” PARCC and Smarter Balanced will
ny
Q Engage (www.engageny.org). launch digital libraries that contain

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 59
 FIGURE 2. Smarter Balanced’s Multiple Testing Sessions

12-Week Testing Window at End of School Year

Performance Tasks (PT) Computer Adaptive Assessment

English Language 2 hours 90 minutes (grades 3–8) to 120 minutes (grade 11)
Arts/Literacy • One task in which students will read mul- • Computer adaptive delivery, with multiple item
tiple articles and write one or more essays types.
using evidence from the readings. • Primarily machine scored.
• Combination of machine and human • Combination of machine and, as needed, human
scoring. scoring.

Mathematics 60 minutes for grades 3–8 and 90 minutes
for grade 11
• One mathematics task that will measure
student ability to integrate knowledge across
multiple standards and solve complex real-
world problems.
• Combination of machine and human
scoring.
90 minutes (grades 3–5) to 120 minutes
(grades 6–8 and 11)
• Computer adaptive delivery, with multiple item
types.
• Primarily machine scored.
• Combination of machine and, as needed, human
scoring.

coursework in postsecondary institu-

We can change the trajectory of school
improvement in the United States and create
a much stronger future for all our youth.
instructional, assessment, and profes-
sional development resources. All the
resources, whether culled from the best
of existing state resources, developed
under contract, or developed by
members of the teacher cadres, will be
reviewed for alignment and quality.
Each consortium is also developing
optional interim assessment resources
to both build understanding of the
new expectations and provide infor-
mation about student progress and
gaps across the school year. There
will be a charge for access to some
of these resources. Smarter Balanced
plans to release its formative tools
within its digital library in spring 2014
and its computer-adaptive interim
assessment system by the beginning
of the 2014–15 school year. PARCC
will release its midyear performance-
based assessments for use in the
2014–15 school year; the consortium
will release its formative tools for
grades K–1, diagnostic assessment for
grades 2–8, and speaking and listening
assessment in time for the 2015–16
school year.
Stepping Up to the Challenge
We should not underestimate the mag-
nitude of the change represented by
the Common Core State Standards and
the new assessments. But as difficult as
this transition will be, it is intended to
ensure that U.S. high school graduates
will have the fundamental skills they
need to begin credit-bearing
tions or career-training programs. The
hope is that by focusing on a core set
of rigorous learning standards and cre-
ating mechanisms to quickly share the
best instructional and professional
development resources, we can change
the trajectory of school improvement
in the United States and create a much
stronger future for all our youth. We
are fortunate that so many educators
are stepping up to this challenge.EL
Note: For more detailed information
about the designs and rollout of the
PARCC and Smarter Balanced assess-
ments, go to the Educational Testing
Service K–12 Center’s website at www
.k12center.org/publications/assessment_
consortia.html, or contact the center at
mail@k12center.org.
Nancy Doorey (ndcoorey@k12center
.org) is director of programs for the K–12
Center at Educational Testing Service.
She also does consulting for a variety of
education reform and policy groups.

60 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

 In other courses, I use content
to build skills. In Cambridge Global
Perspectives, I use skill to deepen
understandingof content
CAMBRIDGE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVESTM TEACHER

Are your students up for a good

argument? We certainly hope so!
Cambridge Global Perspectives is an
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Criterion-Referenced Measurement:
Half a Century Wasted?
Four serious areas of confusion have kept criterion-referenced
measurement from fulfilling its potential.
W. James Popham
F
ifty years ago, Robert Glaser
(1963) introduced the
concept of criterion-referenced
measurement in an article in
American Psychologist. In the
half century that has followed, this
approach has often been regarded
as the most appropriate assessment
strategy for educators who focus
more on teaching students than on
comparing them. Its early proponents
touted criterion-referenced testing
as a measurement strategy destined
to revolutionize education. But has
this approach lived up to its promise?
Let’s see.
Origins of an Idea
To decide whether criterion-referenced
testing has accomplished what it set
out to accomplish, we need to under-
stand its origins. Glaser, a prominent
University of Pittsburgh professor,
asserted in his seminal 1963 article
that certain instructional advances
could render traditional education
testing obsolete. More specifically, he
raised the issue of whether traditional
measurement methods, and especially
62 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
their score-interpretation strategies,
were appropriate in situations in
which instruction was truly successful.
During World War II, Glaser had
tested bomber-crew trainees by using
the then widely accepted norm-
referenced measurement methods
aimed chiefly at comparing test takers
with one another. Each trainee’s score
was interpreted by comparing it with
(or “referencing it to”) the scores
earned by previous trainees, usually
known as the norm group. Because
the norm group’s performances were
usually nicely spread out across the
full range of possible scores, it was
easy to understand what it meant
for an individual test taker to score
at the 98th percentile or at the 30th
percentile. Such comparative inter-
pretations were particularly useful
in military settings, providing a
straightforward way to select the
highest-scoring (and presumably
most-qualified) applicants to fill a
limited number of openings.
Following the war, Glaser pursued
his PhD at Indiana University and
studied with B. F. Skinner, often
regarded as the father of modern
behaviorism. In the late 1950s, Glaser
became an advocate of programmed
instruction, an approach growing
out of Skinner’s theories, in which
students worked through carefully
sequenced instructional materials that
were designed to present information
in small steps, provide immediate
feedback, and require learners to
correctly complete one step before
moving on to the next (Lumsdaine &
Glaser, 1960). Because practitioners of
programmed instruction relentlessly
revised their curriculum materials
until these materials were effective in
getting students to the desired learning
objective, Glaser and his programmed
instruction compatriots were often
able to produce high levels of learning
for essentially all students.
We might think that this accom-
plishment would engender jubilation.
However, a number of measurement
traditionalists were far from delighted.
That’s because the uniformly high
test results typically produced by
programmed instruction materials
exposed a serious shortcoming in tra-
ditional test-interpretation practices.
When the range of student scores
was compressed at the high end of
the scale, the possibility of useful

student-to-student comparisons
instantly evaporated.
Glaser recognized that a dra-
matic reduction in the variability
of students’ test scores would make
norm-referenced score interpretation
meaningless. After all, if nearly every
student’s score approached perfection,
it made no sense to compare one stu-
dent’s near-perfect score with the near-
perfect scores of other students. In
his landmark 1963 article, therefore,
Glaser proposed an alternative way
of interpreting students’ test perfor-
mances in settings where instruction
was working really well. The label
he attached to this new, more
take a spelling test containing a rep-
resentative sample of those words.
A criterion-referenced interpretation
of a student’s score would focus on
the number or percentage of the 250
words that the student was able to
spell correctly. We might report, for
example, that a student’s test score
signified that he or she had mastered
90 percent of the criterion domain
of hard-to-spell words. Or, if we had
previously determined that the pro-
ficiency cutoff score would be 90
percent, we might simply report the
student’s performance on this criterion
domain as “proficient.”
The contrast between a norm-
referenced and a criterion-referenced
interpretation is quite striking. On the
© EDEL RODRIGUEZ/THEiSPOT
same end-of-year spelling test, a norm-
referenced interpretation might report
that a student who spelled 90 percent
of the words correctly scored at the
78th percentile in relationship to
instructionally attuned score inter- the scores of students in the norm
pretation strategy, criterion-referenced group—or at the 98th percentile, or
measurement, is still widely used today. the 30th percentile, depending on how
well the norm group students per-
An Approach Preoccupied formed. This norm-referenced inter-
with Instruction pretation, however, would be of little
Unlike the more traditional method use in deciding whether a particular
of referencing a given student’s student had mastered the criterion
test score to the scores of other test domain to the desired level.
takers, Glaser’s proposed approach Of course, advocates of criterion-
called for referencing a student’s test referenced testing don’t suggest that
score to a criterion domain—a clearly there is no role for tests yielding
described cognitive skill or body of norm-referenced interpretations.
knowledge. For example, suppose Indeed, in some situations it’s useful to
that a set of 250 hard-to-spell words compare a student’s performance with
has been the focus of the school year’s the performance of other students.
spelling instruction, and students (For example, educators may want to
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 63
identify which students in a school
would most benefit from remedial
support or enrichment instruction.)
However, to support actionable
instructional decisions about how best
to teach students, norm-referenced
inferences simply don’t cut it.
An inherent assumption of criterion-
referenced assessment, then, is that
by articulating with sufficient clarity
the nature of the curricular aims
being assessed, and by building tests
that enable us to measure whether
individual students have achieved
those aims to the desired level, we
can teach students better. Criterion-
referenced measurement, in every
significant sense, is a measurement
approach born of and preoccupied
with instruction.
Four Areas of Confusion
Glaser’s 1963 introduction of
criterion-referenced testing attracted
only modest interest from educators.
Actually, nothing more was published
on the topic until the late 1960s, when
a colleague and I published an article
analyzing the real-world education
implications of criterion-referenced
measurement (Popham & Husek,
1969). Nonetheless, a small number
of measurement specialists began to
tussle with issues linked to this inno-
vative approach.
Here are four key issues we must
address to decide whether criterion-
referenced measurement has lived up
to the instructional promises accompa-
nying its birth.
Tests or Test Interpretations?
During the 1970s, when interest in
criterion-referenced measurement
began to flower, a misconception
emerged that still lingers: the idea that
there are “criterion-referenced tests”
and “norm-referenced tests.” This
is simply not so. What’s criterion-
referenced or norm-referenced is the
64 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
inference about, or the interpretation
of, a test taker’s score. Although
test developers may build tests they
believe will provide accurate norm-
referenced or criterion-referenced
inferences, a test itself should never be
characterized as norm-referenced or
criterion-referenced.
To understand this point, imagine
a district-level accountability test
whose items are designed to measure
students’ mastery of three distinct
criterion domains representing three
key mathematical skills. The district
uses the test results to make criterion-
referenced inferences—that is, to
To support actionable instructional decisions
about how best to teach students, norm-
referenced inferences simply don’t cut it.
measure the degree to which each
student has mastered the three key
math skills. However, after adminis-
tering the test for several years, district
educators also develop normative
tables that enable them to compare
a student’s score with the scores of
previous test takers. Thus, students’
performances, originally intended to
provide criterion-referenced infer-
ences, could also be interpreted in a
norm-referenced manner. The test
itself hasn’t changed—only the way
the results are interpreted has.
If a colleague refers to “a norm-
referenced test” or “a criterion-
referenced test,” you should not
necessarily regard this colleague as
a loose-lipped lout. Your colleague
might be casually referring to tests that
have deliberately been developed to
provide norm-referenced or criterion-
referenced interpretations. But to use
precise language in a measurement
arena where precision is so badly
needed, it’s score-based inferences—not
tests—that are criterion-referenced or
norm-referenced.
What’s a Criterion?
One of the important early disagree-
ments among devotees of criterion-
referenced measurement was what
the word criterion meant. In his 1963
essay, Glaser used the term the way it
was commonly employed in the early
1960s, to refer to a level of desired
student performance. In that same
essay, however, Glaser indicated that a
criterion identified a behavior domain,
such as a cognitive skill or a body of
knowledge.
Candidly, a degree of definitional
ambiguity existed in Glaser’s initial
essay. Nor did Husek and I improve
that situation in our 1969 follow-
up—regrettably, we also failed to take
a clear stance on the level-versus-
domain issue.
Nonetheless, by the close of
the 1970s, most members of the
measurement community had aban-
doned the view of a criterion as a
level of performance (Hambleton,
Swaminathan, Algina, & Coulson,
1978), recognizing that the criterion-
as-domain view would make a greater
contribution to teachers’ instructional
thinking. Although determining
expected levels of student performance
is important, the mission of criterion-
referenced measurement criteria is to
tie down the skills or knowledge being
assessed so that teachers can target
instruction, not to set forth the levels
of mastery sought for those domains.
Regrettably, the criterion-as-level
view appears to be seeping back into
the thinking of some measurement
specialists. During several recent
assessment-related conferences, I
have heard colleagues unwisely char-
acterize criterion-referenced testing
as an assessment strategy intended
to measure “whether test takers have
reached a specified level of perfor-
mance.” Such a view makes little con-
tribution to the kind of measurement
clarity Glaser thought would lead to
better instruction.
What’s the Optimal Grain Size?
We can properly consider tests that
provide criterion-referenced interpre-
tations as ways of operationalizing the
curricular aims being measured. That’s
where grain-size—the breadth of a cri-
terion domain—comes in. If the grain
size of what’s to be measured is either
too narrow or too broad, instructional
dividends disappear.
If each curricular domain is too
narrow, a teacher may be over-
whelmed by too many domains. We
saw this clearly when the behavioral
objectives movement of the late 1960s
and early 1970s foundered because it
sought students’ mastery of literally
hundreds of behaviorally stated objec-
tives (Popham, 2009). Sadly, that
same mistake was reenacted in recent
years when state education officials
adopted far too many state curriculum
standards. Moreover, the federal
government (in an effort to dissuade
states from aiming only at easy-to-
achieve curriculum targets) insisted
that each state’s annual accountability
tests measure students’ mastery of all
of that state’s standards. The result
was an excessive number of curricular
targets—far too many for teachers
to use in day-to-day instructional
decision making
On the other hand, now that
so many states have adopted the
Common Core State Standards,
the assessment pendulum may be
swinging too far in the opposite
direction. At last report, the two
federally funded state assessment
consortia charged with creating assess-
ments to measure students’ mastery of
the Common Core standards appear
intent on reporting a student’s perfor-
mance on their tests at a remarkably
general level. In the case of reading,
for example, this is the “assessment
claim” one assessment consortium
plans to use to report a student’s per-
formance: “Students can read closely
and analytically to comprehend a
range of increasingly complex literary
and informational texts” (Smarter Bal-
anced Assessment Consortium, 2012).
Teachers are certain to be baffled
about what such a broad domain is
actually intended to measure. If the
Common Core–focused assessment
domains remain too broad, the
criterion-referenced inferences about
students’ performances that these tests
yield may be instructionally useless.
And therein lies the dilemma that
determines the promise—or the
impotence—of criterion-referenced
assessment. If students’ mastery of
the Common Core State Standards is
measured with criterion referencing
that yields instructionally actionable
reports, then the architects of the
Common Core curricular aims are
likely to see their lofty education
aspirations realized. If, however, the
grain size of the Common Core assess-
ments is too broad to guide teachers
in making sensible instructional
moves, then our optimism regarding
the Common Core initiative should
diminish.
How Much Descriptive
Detail Should We Provide?
Criterion-referenced measurement
revolves around clear descriptions of
what a test is measuring. If teachers
possess a clear picture of what their
students are supposed to be able to
do when instruction is over, those
teachers will be more likely to
design and deliver properly focused
instruction. And if the test shows that
an instructional sequence has failed
to work satisfactorily, a clear criterion
domain description can help isolate
needed adjustments so that the teacher
can make the next version of the
instructional sequence more effective.
It’s just common sense: Clarified
descriptions of curricular ends permit
teachers to more accurately select and
refine their instructional means.
However, we need to include the
right amount of detail when describing
curricular targets, or few educators
will actually employ such descriptions.
Too brief or too detailed descriptions
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 65
of criterion domains can erode the
instructional dividends of criterion-
referenced measurement.
Over the years, particularly since the
mid-1960s, U.S. educators have often
made these two opposite but equally
serious mistakes when describing the
criterion domains to be taught and
measured. Initially, educators tried to
describe what tests ought to measure
by using extremely abbreviated state-
ments of instructional objectives. But
such abbreviated statements frequently
led to misinterpretation. To avoid this
problem, certain assessment specialists
tried to describe the nature of criterion
Criterion-referenced testing as Glaser
conceptualized it represented an important
departure from traditional thinking.
domains in great detail (Hively, 1974).
Sometimes the description of a single
domain consumed 3–5 single-spaced
pages. Unfortunately, the longer and
more detailed these descriptions were,
the less likely it was that busy edu-
cators possessed the patience to use
them—or even read them.
Clearly, we need “Goldilocks”
domain descriptions, in which the
level of descriptive detail is neither too
brief nor too elaborate, but just right.
Promises Fulfilled?
Looking back on 50 years of criterion-
referenced measurement, what can we
conclude? Has Glaser’s concept lived
up to his vision?
Criterion-referenced testing as
Glaser conceptualized it represented
an important departure from tradi-
tional thinking. Instead of interpreting
66 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
test takers’ performances in relative
terms (that is, by referencing these
performances to the performances of
other test takers), criterion-referenced
measurement is an absolute inter-
pretive strategy in which students’
performances are referenced to clearly
explicated domains of knowledge
or skills. This fundamental relative-
versus-absolute distinction continues to
be important.
However, in our attempts to
implement criterion-referenced
measurement, we have sometimes
made four serious mistakes that have
robbed it of its instructional potential.
We have been sloppy in the way
we think and talk about criterion-
referenced measurement, often
slapping the label criterion-referenced
on tests rather than on test-based
interpretations. We’ve also some-
times subscribed to a dysfunctional
criterion-as-level definition of this
approach to testing, beclouding our
measurement picture even more. We
have failed to focus our tests on a
reasonable number of instructionally
digestible assessment targets. And we
often haven’t described the domains of
skills or knowledge being assessed in
practical language. These four imple-
mentation mistakes have distorted
the instructional use of criterion-
referenced measurement.
Happily, all of these mistakes are
rectifiable. If educators understand the
basics of criterion-referenced testing
and demand that any instructionally
oriented assessments avoid the four
implementation errors identified here,
Glaser’s assessment gift to education
will fulfill its promise and foster the
improved instruction its early advo-
cates foresaw.
But please, let’s get this done
without waiting another 50 years. EL
Author’s note: This article is based on
a presentation made at the Teach Your
Children Well conference honoring Pro-
fessor Ronald K. Hambleton, held on
November 9–12, 2012, at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst.
References
Glaser, R. (1963). Instructional technology
and the measurement of learning out-
comes: Some questions. American Psy-
chologist, 18, 519–521.
Hambleton, R. K., Swaminathan, H.,
Algina, J., & Coulson, D. B. (1978).
Criterion-referenced testing and mea-
surement: A review of technical issues
and developments. Review of Educational
Research, 48(1), 1–47.
Hively, W. (1974). Introduction to
domain-referenced testing. Educational
Technology, 14, 5–10.
Lumsdaine, A. A., & Glaser, R. (Eds.).
(1990). Teaching machines and pro-
grammed learning: A source book.
Washington, DC: National Education
Association.
Popham, W. J. (2009). Unlearned lessons:
Six stumbling blocks to our schools’
success. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Edu-
cation Press.
Popham, W. J., & Husek, T. (1969).
Implications of criterion-referenced
measurement. Journal of Educational
Measurement, 6(1), 1–9.
Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
(2012, March 1). Claims for the English
language arts/literacy summative
assessment. Retrieved from www.smarter
balanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/
uploads/2012/09/Smarter-Balanced-
ELA-Literacy-Claims.pdf
W. James Popham (popham@ucla.edu)
is emeritus professor at the University of
California–Los Angeles. His most recent
book is Evaluating America’s Teachers:
Mission Possible? (Corwin, 2013).
Improving
Schools
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Are Our Kids Ready for
To show what they know on
computerized assessments, even
digital natives may need help
manipulating the technology.
Kristine Gullen

R
ecently, my 21-year-old son faced a real-life
task that made me think about the assessments
connected to the Common Core standards that
U.S. students will soon complete in elementary,
middle, and high school. I had accompanied
Nickolas to the airport to catch his flight for a semester
abroad. At the ticket counter, the attendant told Nick,
“Your flight to London has been cancelled. After getting
through security, you can try to bump yourself onto a flight
to get over to Europe, and then connect to a boat, train, or
bus to get the rest of the way.”
“What!” The mom in me exclaimed. Nick, however, had
a huge grin on his face at the excitement of this unforeseen
journey. He hugged me and said, “Mom, I’ll call you when
© ADAM MCCAULEY/THEISPOT COLLECTION

I get to the university.” I stood there stunned, struggling to

think of the steps to take in creating a new plan. But Nick
was already walking toward the gate. He was up to the chal-
lenge of finding his destination. When Nick turned to wave,
I had to smile: His shirt said, “Not all who wander are lost.”

Needed: Knowledge, Synthesis, and Tech Skills

To get himself to London, Nick needed basic knowledge
about airports, air and train travel, and the locations of
European cities. He also needed to interpret and synthesize
disparate bits of information and choose the best of several
options—quickly. Students facing the performance tasks
and questions being created by the consortia connected to
the Common Core standards, Smarter Balanced and the
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and
Career (PARCC), will also need to retrieve knowledge and
synthesize it under pressure. Imagine how much harder
Nick’s task would have been if he had scant experience
using the technology involved in modern travel, such
as flight monitors, electronic check-in kiosks, or even
escalators.
Inexperience with technology might frustrate many
students taking the computerized Common Core assess-
ments. As I recently realized after debriefing with hundreds
of students who had participated in pilots of computerized
assessment items, even many digital natives aren’t versed

68 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

Computerized Tests?
in the skills needed to take online tests, such as moving a
cursor, dragging text, or even keyboarding.
As teachers face the reality that students will need to
demonstrate mastery of Common Core–aligned content and
skills through computerized tests as early as fall 2014, we
may feel stunned—just as I did when Nick’s flight was can-
celled. Although we’ve lived through many changes in cur-
riculum and the tools used to facilitate learning, and we’ve
often repeated, “This too will pass,” this time feels different.
Something is really changing.
So let’s consider what that change means and how to get
kids ready for the technical skills involved with these new
assessments, using insights from those who’ve actually tried
them.
In spring 2013, Michigan piloted some of the online
assessment items from Smarter Balanced. As an education
consultant, I support teachers and students in preparing
for this new testing genre. I reasoned that the firsthand
perspectives of students and educators who participated in
the pilot would help me see what each group needs, so I
arranged debriefing sessions in schools. I talked with more
than 500 students who had just taken the pilot items—and
with teachers who’d just administered them.1 Responding
to a set of prepared questions, participants in grades 3, 6, 7,
and 11 shared their take on the technology skills students
will need to successfully demonstrate learning in this new
format.
3rd Graders: “The Bubble in the Straw”
These post-pilot debriefing sessions revealed many tech-
nology skills that younger students, especially, will need
to build before they can demonstrate proficiency through
computerized tests. One debrief began with the question,
“Suppose a student has never taken an online test: What
computer skills would be important for that student to have
before taking this test?”
Hands quickly shot up. Nine-year-old Ethan said, “The
bubble in the straw was really important to learn about; my
fingers wouldn’t work.” Looking around the room, I saw his
classmates nodding their heads in agreement.
Puzzled, I asked, “What exactly did this bubble do?”
With much animation, Ethan pointed up, down, and
side-to-side, “There are straws with a bubble on the side,
on the bottom, and sometimes in the middle. You can move
them this way and that. I had to use the arrow to move the
bubble.”
It became clear that these 3rd graders, many of whom
were well versed in touchscreen devices, had just realized
that putting a finger on the computer screen couldn’t get
the words to move. “Oh,” I exclaimed, awareness dawning,
“that’s called a scroll bar, and, yes it’s very important.”
Brittney chimed in with an additional suggestion for
needed learning: “The blinky line has to be in the box
where you want your words to go. . . . You can press the
letters all you want, but nothing happens if the blinky line
isn’t in the box!” A show of hands revealed that more than
half of these 3rd graders had struggled with how to use the
cursor.
This exchange was a reminder that, even for tech-savvy
students, a high level of competency on one device doesn’t
always transfer to another device or task. Using technology
for demonstrating content knowledge is different from
using it for entertainment.
Computerized and online assessments, educators are
discovering, will require kids to have certain digital skills:
using a mouse, highlighting text, dropping and dragging
text, drawing lines and creating graphs on a screen, oper-
ating an online calculator, using scroll bars (the “bubble in
the straw”), and keyboarding, to name a few. If we want an
online assessment to capture a student’s level of learning,
rather than that student’s ability to navigate technology,
teachers must integrate these skills into their instruction,
giving students practice before administering high-stakes
exams on a computer.
Secondary Students: “Mighty Confusing”
I began my conversations with secondary students by
asking, “When it comes to using technology, is there any-
thing your teachers should know that would help other stu-
dents be successful on this test?”
There was a consensus that negotiating the large amount
of text and questions on the screen was a challenge, espe-
cially on small screens. Janal shared that several multistep
problems
 went on and on and combined stuff
from all sorts of classes. . . . it was
mighty confusing at first. . . .We had
this split screen. I was scrolling on the
left to look at information, then over
to the screen on the right, scrolling to
answer the questions . . . back and forth,
back and forth.
Students who had increased the
font size (an accommodation option)
found that this intensified the amount
of scroll bar usage. Some realized—
after the fact, unfortunately—that they
needed to use the scroll bar on each
question to check whether there was
information beyond that shown on the
initial screen.
Previewing the test format and
directions regarding answer selection
for each section would help test takers.
Some students, relying on past experi-
ences with standardized assessments
in which each question had only
one correct response, missed direc-
tions that changed this expectation.
Ben, who hadn’t read the directions
carefully, shared, “It was confusing
that the computer let you click on
more than one answer. You had to be
careful to unclick when you changed
your mind or you could put in two or
three answers to one question.” “You
have to pay attention,” Kyle warned.
“Many questions had more than one
right answer. It was different from
other tests where you search for the
right answer and move on to the next
question.”
Students at all grade levels dis-
closed frustration with responses that
required extended keyboarding skills.
“There was more I could have said,”
Jacob noted. “There was plenty of
time, and the box wasn’t full. I just
didn’t want to type anymore.” Many
students reported choosing to shorten
responses on constructed-response
items because they lacked fluency with
the keyboard.
70 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
Debrief Questions
Suppose a student has never
taken an online test. What com-
puter skills would be important for
that student to have before taking
this test?
When it comes to using tech-
nology, is there anything your
teachers should know that would
help other students be successful
on this test?
What types of assignments or
activities for which you used
technology helped the most when
taking this test?
What did you like about this test?
Overall, however, students com-
mented positively on computerized
assessment, saying things like, “So
much better than a paper test” and
“I liked all the different questions; it
wasn’t the same boring thing over and
over again.”
Insights from Educators
Debriefing with teachers brought
forth different perspectives. The self-
sufficiency these items required was a
main theme. One teacher reflected,
When it comes to the performance
tasks, my apprehension isn’t the rigor
of the content; it’s the independence
and perseverance students need. I teach
in chunks, with lots of feedback and
support. These assessments expect kids
to be very self-directed with large pieces
of content and many complex tasks. . . .
I’m not sure they’re ready.
Teachers also expressed concern
about the length of items and kids’
lack of keyboarding skills. They
imagined the awkwardness test takers
might feel using a new or different
computer. Keys and spacing often feel
different from one device to the next,
and upgrading to a new device or
operating system can be frustrating.
When I talked with educators at
the district level, I found that logistics
were a challenge for some. A few pilot
sites reported difficulty obtaining
enough devices to give the assess-
ments or having to take over com-
puter labs (and interrupt their use for
instruction). Others had problems
with the amount of bandwidth needed.
Many thought they had sufficient
Internet capacity—until 120 students
logged on to take the assessment at
once.
How to Get Students There
The new online assessments will chal-
lenge educators to ensure that stu-
dents not only have learned certain
things, but also can demonstrate their
knowledge using technology and apply
their learning to a variety of tasks—all
without the direction of the teacher.
So, how do we get there? Here are
five suggestions:
1. Enhance digital skills. Integrate
technology into instruction to help
strengthen students’ computer skills
and transfer those skills to academic
tasks. For instance, you might teach
students to summarize something
they’re reading by creating a word
cloud (using www.wordle.net or
www.tagul.com); or as they discuss
common texts, have students share
their comments and links to further
content in a protected online space
(like www.voicethread.com); or assign
your kids to create a class website.
2. Assign cross-curriculum tasks.
Create projects that connect multiple
subjects so students get accustomed to
using their knowledge flexibly across
disciplines.
 3. Promote self-sufficiency. Assign
multidimensional tasks that scaffold a
student’s ability to persevere over an
extended period while demonstrating
learning independently. Teachers
often require students to research a
topic, write a report, and then present
their findings. When I taught, I would
break such a report into many steps
and check students’ work as many as
10 times along the way: several checks
during the research process, a few
more as learners create an outline,
and a check after each of three drafts.
All this support was great, but an
educator giving a similar assignment
now should have students complete
bigger chunks of work before checking
in and giving support—doing only
five or so check-ins for the project
and decreasing this to two or three
for subsequent projects, working
toward as much independent work as
possible.
4. Provide practice and try out your
technology. Give students opportu-
nities to build a level of comfort with
the actual keyboards, screens, external
mouse or touch pads, and so on that
they’ll use during the assessment. Seek
out opportunities to pilot upcoming
web-based assessments from the
Common Core consortia, or have
all students take a different online
test simultaneously to determine,
firsthand, your system’s capacity,
strengths, and challenges.
5. Debrief. After piloting assessment
items, hold dialogues like those
described here to capture test takers’
thoughts and recommendations for the
skills and support students will need.
As the Common Core assessments
approach, let’s challenge ourselves to
provide opportunities for students to
independently apply the knowledge
they’ll need to meet the new stan-
dards—and indeed, to succeed in life.
If students can’t demonstrate mastery
of content independently, what have
they really learned? EL
1
The schools connected to a secure
browser for students to take the online
items. The Bureau of Assessment and
Accountability within the Michigan
Department of Education supported
this student-voice, post-pilot debriefing
project.
Kristine Gullen (Kristine.Gullen@
oakland.k12.mi.us) is an education
consultant in the School Quality and
Learning Services Department at
Oakland Schools in Waterford, Michigan.

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 COMMENTARY

PERSONALIZATION:
It’s Anything But Personal
Customization is
supposed to be all about
choice. But where’s
the choice in mass
customized learning?

Maja Wilson

I
n 2010, mass customized learning
(MCL) took the education market-
place by storm with the debut
of Bea McGarvey and Chuck
Schwahn’s self-published book,
Inevitable. MCL’s national tour began
in the authors’ home state of Maine,
where I also live and work. So it isn’t
a surprise that everyone around me
seems to have jumped on the mass
customized learning bandwagon at
some point during the past three years.
Superintendents across the state
have selected the book for school
board and administrator study groups.
At the public university where I
worked as a teacher educator, my
© MIKE FLIPPO/SHUTTERSTOCK

administrator offered to buy a copy

for each education faculty member
last year. Dozens of local districts—
including those in the Maine Cohort

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 73
for Customized Learning—have
used the book to transform their cur-
riculum or schedules. Despite the
fact that many districts tumble off the
MCL bandwagon a year (or less) after
hopping on, Inevitable has managed
to displace differentiation, yesterday’s
education buzzword du jour, with
today’s—personalized learning.
Because few things are “inevitable”
apart from death and taxes, we’re long
past due for a careful examination of
the assumptions about teaching and
learning that gave birth to the terms
customized, individualized, and per-
sonalized learning. My complaints go
beyond disdain for good words turned
into jargon by the addition of the
suffix “ize.” In the case of personalized
© MIKE FLIPPO/SHUTTERSTOCK
learning, it doesn’t just elongate the
root word and bestow on it a vague
air of science; it actually changes its
meaning entirely—from “personal” to There’s a big difference between buying
its antonym, “anything but personal.”
So what do Schwahn and McGarvey a premade product tweaked according to
mean by personalization? Their
webpage (www.masscustomized your most trivial preferences and making or
learning.com) lays out the band-
wagon appeal and enthusiastic use receiving something that’s truly personal,
of italics that characterize their
strategy: “Everybody is mass custom- something that emerges from your life story.
izing. Everybody. Everybody except
education.”
Never mind that “education” is not
a “body”—we have bigger fish to fry. personalization are all about choice. who’s really in control: the corpo-
Because in the next breath, the authors If we’re only going that far, I’m on ration. If we refer to this projection
illustrate what they mean by custom- board: I believe that students (and the as “personalization,” we cheapen our
ization, the heart of their vision of per- teachers who teach them) should have vision of the personal.
sonalized learning: plenty of choices. This doesn’t mean that I won’t make
Pandora.com allows me (and you, of But notice what becomes of “the use of some of these options: I’d rather
course) to customize my music radio personal” in the choices offered. When order my car in a color that doesn’t
station; My Yahoo allows me to cus- customers are invited to customize show dirt. But I don’t pretend that
tomize my news page; Starbucks allows products in order to personalize them, the color of my car is personal or that
me to have a venti decaf with a little they’re offered the dimmest possible it expresses “me” in any significant
room. (www.masscustomizedlearning
.com/content/what.htm) patina of their personalities projected way. There’s a big difference between
onto the surface of a standard product buying a premade product tweaked
Because the authors introduce through several circumscribed options. according to your most trivial prefer-
these corporate examples as the These options give the consumer the ences and making or receiving some-
basis for their education vision, we illusion of control, but when you thing that’s truly personal, something
should examine the corporate view note the authors’ repetition of the that emerges from your life story,
of the “personal” embedded in them. word allow (“Starbucks allows me to from the things you know and want to
On the surface, customization and have . . .”), you get a better idea of know, from your wishes and fears—in

74 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

short, from the things that make you
you.
Because I teach literacy methods
courses to preservice teachers, I’ve
listened to hundreds of college seniors
recount formative literacy experiences.
Many describe the homemade books
their parents or grandparents created
for them, books woven through with
experiences they’ve had together or
silly jokes they’ve exchanged or wishes
they’ve expressed. These books are
personal, not personal-ized.
I’ve not heard a single student gush
about the commercial version of these
stories, although a friend told me
about the customized gift his daughter
received more than a decade ago: a
video in which Barney, the purple
dinosaur, interacts with the cartoon
body of a child topped by [insert a
photo of your child’s head here]—with
only a slight pause in the dialogue
every time Barney addresses [insert
your child’s name here]. Although my
students’ homemade books often travel
with them to college and beyond, this
personalized cartoon, my friend told
me, quickly became a family joke.
Nevertheless, McGarvey and
Schwahn (2010) seem to value these
kinds of personalized products. While
discussing Amazon, Schwahn asserts,
Amazon knows me. They know my
name, my purchasing history, my pref-
erences. . . . All they needed was the
whiz-bang technology to put Schwahn,
my past book purchases, and the title of
the new book together and, like magic,
when I next open my Amazon account,
there is the book I obviously need to
have. (p. 9)
Although it seems surprising for
someone to claim that a company as
large as Amazon “knows” him on the
basis of its algorithms, there’s no crime
in McGarvey and Schwahn (2010)
posing the questions that follow:
Might Amazon’s profiling competencies
be used to help us identify the best/most
effective learning styles of individual
learners? Might their profiling insights
and skills be used to identify the topics,
content, people, or activities that
interest that outgoing 5th grade girl or
that quiet 15-year-old boy who always
finds a seat in the back row? (p. 9)
Well, sure, Google or Amazon can
help teachers with a book recommen-
dation. When I taught alternative high
school, one of my students proudly
claimed that she’d never read a book
and never would. From countless
conversations, I knew the themes and
attitudes that appealed to her. Because
none of the books in my repertoire
seemed a good fit, I let Google help
me find Han Nolan’s Born Blue (HMH
Books for Young Readers, 2003);
and then I previewed and bought it
through Amazon. After checking with
the student’s mother, I told the student
that it felt a little risky to give her a
book with such explicit content but
that I thought she was mature enough
to handle it. I read the first chapter
to her until I could see her interest
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piquing. Then I found excuses to leave
“for just a minute” until she grabbed
the book for herself.
Not only did she finish the book,
but she also had an intense e-mail
exchange about its ending with Nolan,
subsequently finding and devouring
every other book Nolan had written.
This student’s budding interest in
reading was driven by my personal
relationship with her. Sending her
to Google or Amazon wouldn’t have
worked.
But McGarvey and Schwahn’s vision
of personalized learning doesn’t just
suggest that teachers must sometimes
use Google or Amazon as a tool, which
just about every teacher already does.
They’re interested in using technology
to get rid of the middleman. Their
discussion of music delivery systems
helps us better understand their vision:
Apple has mass customized the selection
process, the delivery process, and the
© 2014 The College Board. 13b-8726
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 75
 listening experience . . . and is doing it
cheaper than ever before . . . all while
making big dollars. . . . iTunes makes
it easy to find that song and download
it directly to your iPhone in about a
minute. All with one click. Your Visa
card is debited, the artist’s account is
credited, and you are one-half of a duo
doing “I Did It My Way” with Frank
Sinatra. All friction free. No one did any
work, no one other than you touched
anything. And Steve Jobs buys another
bottle of expensive Merlot. (2010, p. 7)
To be fair, I share McGarvey and
Schwahn’s breathlessness about tech-
nology. Whenever I answer my cell
phone, I imagine the caller disinte-
grating into bits, hurtling through
space, and reassembling inside the
receiver in miniature, like Mike Teavee
in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I
don’t know how Verizon does it. But
I’m not so breathless that I can’t pause
and interrogate this description of the
process, which the authors will shortly
apply to education:
All friction free. No one did any work,
no one other than you touched any-
thing. And Steve Jobs buys another
bottle of expensive Merlot.
There are at least two significant
problems with these three sentences.
The second sentence just isn’t true.
iTunes may have gotten rid of the
visible middle(wo)men—including
independent music store owners who
contribute to local economies and get
to know customers’ tastes. But someone
is still doing the work. Apple requires
plenty of humans to invoke its magic,
the whiz-bang iPhones, iPads, and
MacBooks we might use to download
our customized music choices.
It takes just one example to illus-
trate the moral stakes of pretending
that no one other than you touched
anything in this brave 21st century
world. A 2012 New York Times article
titled, “In China, Human Costs Are
Built into the iPad,” describes the
string of workplace suicides as well
as the harsh working conditions
76 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
and underage employees at Apple’s
overseas factories (Duhigg & Barboza,
2012). We can perhaps be forgiven our
breathlessness, but not our blindness.
Even if it were true that “no one
other than you touched anything,” we
would still have to ask whether this
hands-off approach is a good model for
children’s learning. It’s a 20th century
behaviorist fantasy that efficiency in
the realm of human affairs should
mean less human interaction. John B.
Watson, the father of behaviorism,
believed that nothing so ephemeral as
mind or emotion exists—only physical
responses to stimuli. He tested his
Is this hands-off
approach a good
model for the learning
of children?
theory on his own family, maintaining
that “mother love is a dangerous
instrument” and that children should
not be touched. His results, I might
add, were disastrous (Buckley, 1989).
Watson’s 19th century behav-
iorist experiment found many routes
into education, including Watson’s
longtime collaboration with Robert
Yerkes, the father of standardized
testing in the United States. Behav-
iorist schooling methods fit per-
fectly with the “scientific” efficiency
movement of the same period, which
viewed human labor and interaction as
impediments to fast, cheap products.
These behaviorist assumptions are
still firmly implanted in the notion
of mass customized learning, that
(1) technology will make education
more efficient by getting rid of the
daily face-to-face interactions between
students and teachers, and (2) what
makes you you can be reduced to your
publically observable behavior—your
online book purchases or the number
of espresso shots you order in your
Starbucks latte.
Here’s what all this customization
looks like in the schools:
Google and Bing can get any
information you want in three clicks
or less . . . (Well, not quite anything I
guess; they don’t seem to be able to tell
me where I left those leather gloves that
I paid big bucks for!) . . . Why not just
put our curriculum on Google or Bing?
Of course, this assumes that your cur-
riculum, your learner outcomes, and
the accompanying learning activities for
those things that are best learned with a
computer have been created. So get at it!
(McGarvey & Schwahn, 2010, p. 29)
McGarvey and Schwahn envision
a kind of national database of work-
sheets and online learning activities
(games, videotapes, and so on). These
are education’s standard products,
along with the standard learner out-
comes linked to them—the two shots
and 2 percent milk you get from Star-
bucks in a grande if you don’t person-
alize. The educational personalization
to all this educational standardization
looks like this: Online (standardized)
assessments tell students which
standard worksheets and activities to
download next, which they can com-
plete wherever and whenever they
like.
Lori—McGarvey and Schwahn’s
hypothetical high school student—
e-mails her teacher to approve the
schedule she creates for herself
through Yahoo Exchange Calendar.
She spends most days on her com-
puter at home, although her parents
occasionally arrange a personal
finance seminar at a local bank, and
she meets friends sometimes at the
Learner Center because they’re all
working on the same math outcomes.
At one point, Lori bemoans her limited
budget, which keeps her from working
more frequently, coffee in hand,
at Starbucks.
 But how to keep track of all of these
children? McGarvey and Schwahn
(2010) look to Walmart’s barcodes.
According to the authors, “What
Walmart has done with the barcode
is near genius . . . A humanized
application . . . could allow school
leaders to be anywhere and still be
accountable for the whereabouts
of each student, for the real-time
accessing of individual student
learning activities” (p. 12).
Whether it is possible (let alone
desirable) to “humanize” bar codes to
keep track of children’s whereabouts
and activities, this is a lonely vision
of school for actual human teenagers,
despite Lori’s hypothetical cheeriness
about it all. The fact that school can
be a lonely place for many teens
should be a high order of concern for
all educators, but the solution is not
to disband the community and quite
literally keep tabs on the children
from a distance.
With this vision of teaching, you
can imagine why one of my most
creative student-teachers came to
my office last year in tears when the
school she’d been placed in moved
to mass customized learning—which
meant that her job as a math teacher
would be to collate, staple, distribute,
and score individual math packets.
And you can imagine why one of my
colleagues in the National Writing
Project—a true believer in personal
learning whose school was one of the
first in the Maine Coalition for Cus-
tomized Learning—decided regret-
fully to pull his own children out of
the district. McGarvey and Schwahn
(2010) intuited, perhaps, the dissat-
isfaction that would inevitably follow
the implementation of this approach,
preempting it with, “In short, do what
we tell you, darn it!” (p. 2).
As the MCL train chugs across the
United States, surely school leaders
invited to jump on board won’t be left
so breathless by the whiz-bang magic
of Bing that they confuse personal-
ization with learning that’s truly
personal. EL
References
Buckley, K. W. (1989). Mechanical man:
John B. Watson and the beginnings of
behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press.
Duhigg, C., & Barboza, D. (2012, January
25). In China, human costs are built
into the iPad. New York Times.
McGarvey, B., & Schwahn, C. (2010).
Inevitable: Mass customized learning (1st
ed.). Seattle, WA: CreateSpace.
Copyright © 2014 Maja Wilson
Maja Wilson (maja384@yahoo.com)
is the author of Rethinking Rubrics in
Writing Assessment (Heinemann, 2006).
She currently teaches composition at
Eastern Maine Community College,
Bangor, Maine.

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ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 77
 Bryan Goodwin

Research Says
Better Tests Don’t Guarantee Better Instruction

W
Designing ith the approach of the new assess- Confronting Campbell’s Law
ments associated with the Common Unfortunately, any attempt to drive education
large-scale Core standards, some educators improvement with high-stakes testing and
may hope that a new day is dawning. These accountability may have a fundamental flaw.
tests that educators may reason that by providing more In the 1970s, Donald Campbell, then president
thoughtfully constructed measures of higher- of the American Psychological Association,
measure order thinking, the new assessments could lead theorized that “the more any quantitative social
to better classroom instruction. indicator is used for social decision-making,
higher-order After all, we know that “what you measure the more subject it will be to corruption pres-
is what you get.” If we only test basic skills, sures and the more apt it will be to distort
student that’s what teachers will and corrupt the social
teach and what students processes it is intended to
outcomes is will learn. This lesson monitor” (1976, p. 49). In
was supported by a recent other words, according to
only a first step. review of research on Campbell’s law, the higher
high-stakes tests. Faxon- the stakes attached to any
Mills, Hamilton, Rudnick, measure, the less valid that
and Stecher (2013) found measure becomes.
that these tests, which Consider the dramatic
typically measured basic gains reported over the
knowledge, drove teachers years on some states’
to spend more effort “pro- accountability assess-
moting basic skills while ments. If these gains reflect
devoting less attention to true increases in student
helping students develop learning, we would expect
creativity and imagination” (p. 16). It is rea- to see these states’ students demonstrating
sonable to expect, then, that better tests—those similar gains on other measures. The troubling
that require students to master more difficult reality, though, is that gains on high-stakes
content and demonstrate critical thinking— tests do not appear to translate into gains on
will drive better learning outcomes. lower-stakes assessments.
Our cycle of pinning our hopes on the Harvard researcher Brian Jacob (2002),
power of student outcome measurement calls for example, conducted an in-depth analysis
to mind the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, in of test scores in Chicago Public Schools
Bryan Goodwin which Bill Murray plays a self-centered TV during a period (1993–2000) when student
(bgoodwin@mcrel weatherman who finds himself snowbound achievement increased by .30 standard devia-
.org) is chief operating in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, doomed to tions (12 percentile points) in mathematics and
officer at McREL, repeat the same day until he finally changes .20 standard deviations (8 percentile points)
Denver, Colorado. He his ways. In light of the uneven track record of in reading. During that same period, however,
is the author of The 12
previous test-driven reforms, wary educators Jacob found that the achievement of the same
Touchstones of Good
Teaching: A Checklist might reasonably ask, Will better high-stakes students on a low-stakes statewide exam
for Staying Focused assessments really change anything? Or will that ostensibly measured the same learning
Every Day (ASCD, we just experience Groundhog Day all over standards dropped significantly. This finding
2013). again? prompted him to conclude that “despite its
© GREG MABLY

78 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

increasing popularity within edu-
cation, there is little empirical evi-
dence on test-based accountability”
(p. 4).
Similarly, a more recent analysis
of a decade of trend data in 25
states (Nichols, Glass, & Berliner,
2012) found that high-stakes testing
pressure on statewide assessments
under No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
did not translate into better student
achievement on the low-stakes
National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP). Only in 4th grade
math did NAEP scores appear to
improve after NCLB; but they did so
at a slower rate than they had before
NCLB. Moreover, in states with the
highest stakes attached to test results,
NAEP reading scores for students
living in poverty appeared to decline.
In other words, although high
stakes may cause test scores to rise on
a particular assessment, those scores
may not reflect true gains in student
learning. Rather, the gains may reflect
something else—arguably, how well
teachers boosted students’ test-taking
abilities or narrowed instruction to the
knowledge captured on the test.
Will This Time Be Different?
What happens, though, if we admin-
ister better tests—for example, those
that employ performance tasks to
measure critical thinking and student
application of knowledge? Do teacher
practices and student learning change
in positive ways?
Here, there appears to be some
cause for optimism. Faxon-Mills
and colleagues (2013) found that
performance-based assessments—like
those promised in the new Common
Core assessment systems—do have the
potential to drive positive changes in
teaching practices, including encour-
aging greater classroom emphasis
on critical thinking and real-world
problem solving.
However, by themselves, perfor-
mance assessments do not guarantee
better teaching or learning. After
Maryland adopted an assessment that
included more performance tasks,
teachers reported placing greater
emphasis on complex problem solving
and reasoning in the classroom (Lane,
Parke, & Stone, 2002)—but a follow-
up survey of students (Parke & Lane,
2007) found that most were still
experiencing a heavy dose of basic
short-answer recall questions and
textbook-based teaching.
A Cure for Campbell’s Law
According to Campbell (1976), one
way to prevent an indicator from
becoming corrupted or distorted is
to employ multiple measures of per-
formance. Another way, research
suggests, is to emphasize formative
data—low-stakes classroom assess-
ments created by teachers to guide
instruction, which can have a strong,
positive influence on student perfor-
mance and motivation (Wiliam &
Thompson, 2007).

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The key lies in leveraging the daily
or weekly nature of these assess-
ments to guide real-time changes to
classroom instruction (Wiliam &
Thompson, 2007). Therefore, for-
mative assessments should not be
confused with so-called interim or
benchmark assessments, which are
often just large-scale assessments
repackaged as monthly (or longer
cycle) tests. Research shows that such
tests do little or nothing to improve
instruction (Popham, 2006).
Avoiding Groundhog Day
Large-scale assessment is not neces-
sarily a bad idea; it can provide useful
comparative data to identify bright
spots and guide system change. It’s
worth noting that in the same paper
in which Donald Campbell (1976)
advanced Campbell’s law, he also
strongly advocated using evaluation
and data to guide system change.
So designing large-scale tests that
measure higher-order student out-
comes is certainly a worthwhile first
step. However, research suggests that
better tests, although necessary, are
probably not sufficient to effect
change. Unless any new assessment
system is accompanied by systems of
multiple indicators to mute the distor-
tions implied by Campbell’s law,
teacher capacity building to support
better classroom practices, and greater
emphasis on short-cycle formative
classroom assessment to guide
instruction, we may be doomed to
repeat, in Groundhog Day–fashion, the
frustrations of the past. EL
References
Campbell, D. T. (1976). Assessing the impact
of planned social change. Hanover, NH:
Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College.
Faxon-Mills, S., Hamilton, L. S., Rudnick,
M., & Stecher, B. M. (2013). New assess-
ments, better instruction? Designing
assessment systems to promote instruc-
tional improvement. Santa Monica, CA:
RAND.
Jacob, B. A. (2002). Accountability, incen-
tives, and behavior: The impact of high-
stakes testing in the Chicago Public
Schools. Cambridge, MA: National
Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved
from www.nber.org/papers/w8968.pdf
Lane, S., Parke, C. S., & Stone, C. A.
(2002). The impact of a state perfor-
mance-based assessment and account-
ability program on mathematics
instruction and student learning: Evi-
dence from survey data and school per-
formance. Educational Assessment, 8(4),
279–315.
Nichols, S. L., Glass, G. V., & Berliner,
D. C. (2012). High-stakes testing and
student achievement: Updated analyses
with NAEP data. Education Policy
Analysis Archives, 20(20). Retrieved
from http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/
EPSL-0509-105-EPRU.pdf
Parke, C. S., & Lane, S. (2007). Students’
perceptions of a Maryland state perfor-
mance assessment. Elementary School
Journal, 107(3), 305–324.
Popham, J. (2006). Phony formative
assessments: Buyer beware! Educational
Leadership, 64(3) 86–87.
Wiliam, D., & Thompson, M. (2007).
Integrating assessment with instruction:
What will it take to make it work?
In C. A. Dwyer (Ed.), The future of
assessment: Shaping teaching and learning
(pp. 53–82). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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 Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano

Art & Science of Teaching

Using Polling Technologies to Close the Feedback Gap

D
espite the research on the positive hand, teachers can spend more time studying
The more time
effects of efficient and timely student progress, making informed inferences
feedback,1 a significant time gap often about student learning needs, and providing
that elapses
exists between student responses to questions timely interventions.
on an assessment and teacher feedback on Polling technologies also enable all stu-
between a
those responses. Because teachers often take dents in a class to respond to teacher-posed
the assessments home to score by hand, the questions simultaneously, increasing student
student response
“feedback gap” can be at least a day and, in response rates to 100 percent. In addition,
some cases, several days, a week, or more. teachers can pose questions and get instant
and teacher
This lag time greatly diminishes the student responses throughout a class period,
opportunity for students to think about their making assessment a seamless part of the flow
feedback,
thinking, reflect on their of instruction.
errors, and revise their Of course, polling tech-
the less
knowledge. The more nology is not required
time that elapses between for real-time formative
metacognitive
a student response and assessment. Teachers often
teacher feedback, the less ask students to use hand
reflection that
metacognitive reflection signals to respond to a
that takes place. In some question. However, if a
takes place.
situations, students never teacher asks students to
even get the opportunity raise their hands if they
to review their incorrectly don’t understand, typically
answered questions so they few students will raise their
can revise their knowledge. hands. Alternatively, if the
Sonny Magaña is
teacher asks students to
associate vice president
of Marzano Research The Benefits of Polling publicly vote on a question
Laboratory and director Technologies using thumbs up or thumbs down, some
of the Educational The recent emergence of polling technol- students might first look around the room to
Technology Division. ogies—such as clickers, student response determine how others have voted.
Robert J. Marzano is systems, and free online resources like Poll In contrast, when students respond in
cofounder and CEO Everywhere (www.polleverywhere.com) the relatively anonymous mode afforded by
of Marzano Research
or Socrative (www.socrative.com)—can polling technologies—only the student and
Laboratory in Denver,
Colorado, and executive
potentially diminish or even eradicate the teacher know how that student responded—
director of the Learning feedback gap. Armed with almost instanta- the students’ answers will more accurately
Sciences Marzano neous feedback on their responses, students reflect their thinking. This will obviously
Center in Palm Beach are more able to reflect on their thinking increase the accuracy of their responses.
Gardens, Florida. and, often with teacher guidance, revise their
He is coauthor, with knowledge on the spot. Learning from the Data
Michael Toth, of Teacher Polling technologies are helpful to teachers, Let’s say a teacher has used polling devices
Evaluation That Makes
too. Teachers can administer more frequent to collect student responses to six multiple-
a Difference: A New
Model for Teacher assessments because these technologies are choice questions he or she asked in the
Growth and Student easy to use, and when teachers predetermine course of a class period. Each device has
Achievement (ASCD, the correct answers, the assessments literally its own number and is assigned to a par-
2013). grade themselves. Instead of grading tests by ticular student; student responses are listed
© GREG MABLY

82 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

for each voting device and student
name. As soon as a student enters a
response, it’s automatically scored,
with a checkmark indicating a correct
answer. Of course, this immediate
scoring requires that the teacher use
selected-response items, such as mul-
tiple choice, matching, true or false,
and the like.
The display of student responses
shows how all students in the class
answered these six problems. It
clarifies for teachers which students
struggle with which information as
well as which students seem to have
mastered the material. It also shows
how the class did globally: Only one-
half of the class might have answered
Question 4 correctly; Question 6
might have stumped almost everyone.
Teachers can display these data
to the class with the column listing
student names hidden. As long as
students know the number of their
polling device, they can see how their
answers compared with those of other
students, while still maintaining their
anonymity. Teachers can easily initiate
discussions about why several students
might have answered a question or
questions incorrectly.
Polling technologies need not
require new hardware. In classrooms
in which all students own or have
access to a smartphone, students can
take assessments using free polling
software services, such as those
noted above, or services that charge a
nominal fee.
Testing at Three Levels
Polling technologies also offer an
opportunity for teachers to use pro-
ficiency scoring2 when creating tests.
Proficiency scoring begins by writing
items (or selecting them from an item
bank) that reflect three levels of profi-
ciency. These three levels are commu-
nicated to students as learning goals.
For example, consider the following
three levels of learning goals for the
topic of democracies:
Q Basic: Students will be able to
recognize correct definitions of basic
terms and phrases that relate to
democracies.
Q Proficient: Students will be able to
recognize accurate statements about
the defining characteristics of democ-
racies.
Q Advanced: Students will be able to
differentiate democracies from other
forms of governance.
To return to the six-question,
multiple-choice assessment, the first
three questions might focus on content
at the basic level, the next two ques-
tions on content at the proficient level,
and the last question on content at the
advanced level. A display of student
responses would give the teacher an
immediate picture of each student’s
performance at each of the three levels,
as well as how the class did as a whole.
Index to Advertisers
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Big Ideas Learning ......................................4
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Cambridge International Examinations .61
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Charles C Thomas .....................................87
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College Board ............................................75
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www.collegeboard.org/springboard
Crayola .......................................................38
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Exemplars ..................................................79
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McRel .........................................................67
800-781-0156 www.mcrel.org/E
Measured Progress ...................................37
www.measuredprogress.org/ascd
It’s important to note that pat-
terns of student responses to short
classroom assessments will not nec-
essarily provide accurate profiles. A
student might guess at an answer or
miss an item because he or she didn’t
read it correctly. However, if students
answer items at all three levels of dif-
ficulty several times during a week,
accurate patterns should surface for
each student.
Make the Leap
Polling technologies offer a new type
of assessment that benefits both stu-
dents and teachers as it closes the
feedback gap. It’s time to try them.EL
1
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A syn-
thesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to
achievement. New York: Routledge.
2
Marzano, R. J. (2012). An easier way to
score tests. Educational Leadership, 69(6),
82–83.
NASSP........................................................43
www.nassp.org/professionaldevelopment
Questar Assessments ...............................56
http://drp.questarai.com/home
Safe & Civil Schools
(Pacific NW Publishing) ........................... C2
866-542-1490 www.pacificnwpublish.com
School Improvement Network ................15
866-501-6939
www.core-assessments.com
Seton Hall University ...............................71
800-313-9833 www.shu.edu/go/execedd
Smart Training/Singapore Math Now ...32
602-570-1942
Solution Tree ...............................1, 6, 49, 84
800-733-6786 www.solution-tree.com
Solution Tree
(Marzano Research Laboratory) ..............94
888-849-0851
www.marzanoresearch.com/Strategies
Teachers College Press ............................26
800-575-6566 www.tcpress.com
University of Illinois Chicago ...................81
866-772-2268 www.go.uic.edu/ASCD
Wavelength ...............................................33
877-LAUGHS2 www.wavelengthinc.com
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 83
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Deftly moving between research

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 Doug Johnson

Power Up!
Open Educational Resources: On the Web and Free

L
ast year, our state, Minnesota, issued insufficient to meet teachers’ course needs.
Where can
new social studies standards. One of the Happily, our teachers, librarians, and
consequences of this change was that teaching and learning specialists have found
teachers start
our school district could find no suitable a wealth of excellent materials through open
textbooks that covered the new topics that educational resources, also known as OER
learning about
were now required. At the same time, two (Marcinek, 2013). The William and Flora
initiatives were at work at the district level. Hewlett Foundation (n.d.), which has been
and finding open
First, our teaching and learning department working to spread the creation and use of
began an effort to move teachers away from open educational resources for more than 10
educational
textbook-based curriculum content and years, defines OER as
toward standards-based instruction and
resources? teaching, learning, and research resources that
assessment instead. And reside in the public domain or
second, we began to pilot have been released under an
a 1:1 tablet program at the intellectual property license
middle school level. that permits their free use
and repurposing by others.
This perfect storm of Open educational resources
change made it the right include full courses, course
time to begin increasing materials, modules, text-
our use of technology to books, streaming videos,
design curriculum and tests, software, and any other
tools, materials, or techniques
to access instructional used to support access to
resources. We’re therefore knowledge.
moving away from our
traditional reliance on Where can teachers
the textbook and toward start learning about and
providing more online finding open educational
teaching and learning materials through our resources? Any Google search will turn up
content management system, Moodle. countless links, but here are a handful of
places our teachers have found particularly
In Search of Resources helpful.
Moodle (http://moodle.org) is a free appli- Q OpenEd (www.opened.io) describes itself
Doug Johnson
cation that educators can use to create online as “the world’s largest educational resource
(doug0077@gmail.com)
learning sites. Because our teachers had gained catalog,” currently with more than 250,000
is director of media and
technology at Mankato
familiarity with Moodle in some of their staff videos, games, and other resources aligned
Area Public Schools, development activities, they easily learned the to standards. A teacher designing a course
Mankato, Minnesota. mechanics of setting up courses, organizing on ancient civilizations, for example, could
He is the author of The units, adding learning activities, and creating find videos from the “Crash Course World
Classroom Teacher’s assessments. What was more complicated— History” series, such as “Indus Valley Civili-
Technology Survival and remains an ongoing challenge—was zation” (www.opened.io/#!/resources/337165)
Guide (Jossey-Bass, finding instructional resources to populate the and “The Roman Empire, Or Republic,
2012). He blogs at the courses. Although both our district and our Or . . . Which Was It?” (www.opened.io/#!/
Blue Skunk Blog state provide high-quality commercial mate- resources/370461).
(http://doug-johnson rials (including e-books, full-text magazine Q The Digital Public Library of America
.squarespace.com). indices, and educational videos), these were (http://dp.la) and the Library of Congress
© GREG MABLY

ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 85
(www.loc.gov) are fantastic sources of levels; many of the materials can be ability to locate materials, to evaluate
primary materials—including manu- freely remixed, tweaked, and built them for quality and appropriateness,
scripts, artworks, maps, and sound upon by anyone, as long as the creator and to consider what reading levels
recordings. For example, at the Library is given credit. Teachers can par- and information formats a collection
of Congress website, a teacher could ticipate both as content seekers and as of materials should include to facilitate
find 68 early motion picture clips from content creators. effective differentiated instruction
the Spanish-American War. Q CK-12 (www.ck12.org) spe- (Achieve, 2013). In our district, school
Q Gooru (www.goorulearning.org) cializes in “high-quality curated STEM librarians are the experts in finding
is “an open and collaborative online content,” with links to more than and evaluating open educational
community” currently used by more 15,000 resources. resources—and helping teachers learn
than 400,000 teachers in 140 coun- In addition, a November 2013 article to do so as well.
tries and all 50 U.S. states. This site on the Edutopia website, “Open Edu- If all this sounds like a lot of work—
contains customized collections of cational Resources (OER): Resource it is. That’s why school leaders need to
“standards-aligned, interactive learning Roundup” (www.edutopia.org/open- structure the development of online
materials that have been curated educational-resources-guide) includes textbooks and online courseware as
by fellow teachers.” For example, a an informative introductory video, a collaborative effort. At a basic level,
modern world history course created “Why Open Education Matters”; schools can help by creating core sets
by teacher “Ms. Brown” has pulled a discussion of some challenges; a of materials for specific courses or
together materials that cover such list of blogs about open educational grade levels, which individual teachers
topics as industrialism, nationalism, resources; and links to open lesson can then customize and use. We’ve
imperialism, World War I, World War plans and activities. found that one effective strategy is to
II, and the Cold War. pull together small teams of teachers
Q Creative Commons Search (http:// Teachers as Curators and assign them to develop such
search.creativecommons.org) is an The term curation has become a sets of materials for specific units of
especially effective tool for finding popular way to describe the process instruction.
copyright-free media. Creators can of selecting, maintaining, and making Good digital curriculum materials
license their materials on Creative accessible repositories of useful mate- can and should be much more than
Commons with one of four permission rials. Effective curation requires the just regular textbooks available in PDF
format. The growing wealth of open
educational resources and the ability
Making It Happen to organize them through content
management systems makes the
What School and District Leaders Can Do standard textbook look positively
Q Consider replacing textbooks with more flexible and standards-specific digital obsolete. EL
resources, including course management systems such as Moodle.
Q Check to see whether there are statewide initiatives for developing open- References
source courses or digital textbooks tailored to your local standards. Achieve (2013). Open education resources:
OER evaluation rubrics. Washington,
Q Understand the philosophy of open educational resources and promote
DC: Author. Retrieved from http://
their use. achieve.org/oer-rubrics
Q Create intellectual property policies that encourage in-house development of Marcinek, A. (2013, November 4). 6 open
teaching resources. Good board policies will protect the rights of the school dis- educational resources [blog post].
trict by giving it ownership rights that will remain even should the creator leave Retrieved from Edutopia’s Education
the district. Such policies will also give ownership rights to the creators (teachers) Trends blog at www.edutopia.org/blog/
for non-district uses (for example, in future teaching positions, in publications, or open-educational-resources-andrew-
marcinek
sharing with colleagues).
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Q Expect your school librarian to have and share expertise in locating and evalu- (n.d.). Open educational resources. Menlo
ating open educational resources. Park, CA: Author. Retrieved from www
.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-
educational-resources

86 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

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 Thomas R. Hoerr

Principal Connection
Service Vs. Hospitality

A
lthough educators’ roles are unique, with every sense, and following up with a
Just as
there is much that we can learn thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It
from other arenas and professions. takes both great service and great hospitality
really good
Observing how students engage in learning to rise to the top.”
at a children’s museum offers obvious This is true in schools, too. Service, even
restaurants do
lessons. The array of metrics used in health good service, isn’t sufficient. We must
care to monitor patient health demonstrates strive for hospitality and the relationships it
more than offer
what might happen with assessing students’ makes possible. That hospitality orientation
learning. And then there are restaurants. What applies to my three main audiences: staff,
high-quality
can school leaders learn from restaurateurs? A students, and students’ families. Thinking
lot, it turns out. about their education journey—not just the
food, really
I’ve just finished reading Danny Meyer’s outcome (comparable to Meyer’s focus on
book, Setting the Table the experience and the
good schools
(HarperCollins, 2006), relationships, not just the
and I’m struck by how food)—reminds me that
do more than
many of his anecdotes how we learn is powerful
and principles are directly in determining our success
impart skills and
applicable to schools. and in fostering our atti-
Really good restaurants tudes about learning.
knowledge.
do more than offer high- The hospitality context
quality food, just as really that administrators set is
good schools do more crucial.
than impart skills and For staff, do we cel-
knowledge. Meyer, a ebrate their successes?
famous New York restau- Are expectations clear
rateur, says that “food is and roles delineated, but
secondary to something with enough room for dis-
that matters even more. In the end, what’s cretion to allow for a personal touch? Do staff
most meaningful is creating positive, uplifting members feel that it’s their school, or just a
outcomes for human experiences and human place they go to work?
relationships. Business, like life, is all about For students, do the walls and halls welcome
how you make people feel. It’s that simple, everyone? Going beyond the honor roll and
Thomas R. Hoerr
(trhoerr@newcity and it’s that hard.” trophies, are there signs applauding effort and
school.org) is head Meyer captures the value of relationships grit? Can students use different intelligences in
of school at the New by distinguishing between service and hos- learning? Do students feel that it’s their school,
City School, 5209 pitality: “Service is the technical delivery of or just a place they go to learn?
Waterman Ave., St. a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of For students’ families, do we make them
Louis, MO 63108. He is that product makes the recipient feel. Service feel welcome beyond those days when confer-
the author of The Art
is a monologue—we decide how we want to do ences, games, or performances are scheduled?
of School Leadership
(ASCD, 2005) and
things and set our own standards for service. Do we regularly inform them about what we
Fostering Grit: How Do Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue.” are doing and why we are doing it? Do fam-
I Prepare My Students That dialogue is rich with implications and ilies feel that it’s their school, or just a place
for the Real World? possibilities. Meyer continues, “To be on a their children attend?
(ASCD, 2013). guest’s side requires listening to that person Continued on p. 91
© GREG MABLY

88 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

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 Carol Ann Tomlinson

One to Grow On
The Principal in the Hallway

R
ecently, a colleague told me about a which I’m sure were the focus of the prin-
Compelling
principal whose school she made a cipal my colleague admired—are especially
point to visit any time she could. She powerful. The symbolic leader focuses others’
school leaders
said she always learned something when efforts on what is of greatest importance to
she went there. This principal was the best the school, such as making it a place where
are driven
exemplar she’d ever seen of leadership that everyone feels heard and valued, or empha-
engenders a positive school culture. sizing deep learning for everyone every day.
by a vision of
I asked her what he did. Without hesitation, The cultural leader focuses on building a
she responded, “He found a place in the community, and ultimately a culture, around
important work
hallways through which almost every person whatever matters most.
in the school passes during the course of a Sergiovanni makes an intriguing point: The
that needs to be
typical day. He makes it a priority to stand at greater the presence of symbolic and cultural
that spot whenever people are moving about. leadership, the less the other three leadership
done on behalf
This allows him to connect forces matter. That’s not
with nearly everyone every to say that symbolic and
of young people.
day.” cultural leadership negate
The image was the need for a school that
intriguing. I could see the runs efficiently or the need
danger of this principal for intelligent deployment
being seen as a sort of of human capacity. Rather,
“Big Brother,” monitoring symbolic and cultural
the actions of the build- leadership subsume the
ing’s inhabitants. Clearly, other “forces” in many
however, my colleague ways and draw people’s
experienced his presence attention to more com-
quite differently—as did pelling concerns.
the educators, parents, and
students in the school. Leading By Vision
The principal who stood in the hallway was
Five Kinds of Leadership creating an opportunity to act as a symbolic
Carol Ann Tomlinson Far from being a human surveillance camera, and cultural leader. By seeing colleagues
(cat3y@virginia.edu) this principal was practicing a particular and students daily, creating opportunities to
is William Clay Parrish
and potent variety of leadership. Thomas initiate conversations that helped him under-
Jr. Professor and
Chair of Educational Sergiovanni (1999) describes five forces of stand their concerns and communicate his
Leadership, Foun- leadership: technical, human, educational, own vision for the school, he was living out
dation, and Policy at symbolic, and cultural. In terms of school five key beliefs:
the Curry School of leadership, an administrator whose style is Q Compelling school leaders are driven by
Education, University mainly technical would manage the building a vision of important work. Such leadership is
of Virginia in Charlot- well. A leader focused on human leadership not about buses and bathrooms or test scores
tesville. She is the
would manage people and human resources and order. It’s about making kids’ lives and
author, with Tonya R.
Moon, of Assessment
effectively. An educational leader would have prospects more promising. Standing at that
and Student Success especially sound knowledge of the practice strategic spot gave this administrator an oppor-
in a Differentiated and science of education. tunity to see students in ways that enhanced
Classroom (ASCD, The remaining two leadership forces— his determination to serve them well.
2013). © GREG MABLY

90 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014

 Q To lead is to invite others to build
young lives. The principal helped
develop shared commitments by
being available daily—and by asking
questions that kept the focus on the
values he hoped teachers would share,
acknowledging things teachers did
that strengthened the school, and just
being interested in teachers’ lives.
Q Before individuals are willing to
dedicate their efforts to a vision, the
visionary must prove that vision to
be compelling—and prove himself or
herself trustworthy. Being present and
accessible builds trust.
Q Before individuals are able to
contribute significantly to the vision,
someone must help them develop the
knowledge, attitudes, insights, and
skills they need to make a real contri-
bution. Knowing how to facilitate this
growth in a broad array of individuals
requires a diagnostician who seeks to
understand each person’s strengths,
and who helps each person learn from
both his or her individual work and
Service Vs. Hospitality
Continued from page 88
A feeling of shared ownership, in
which “patrons” feel that the “res-
taurant” is theirs, too, should be our
goal. Meyer says, “I instruct my staff
members to figure out whatever it
takes to make the guests feel and
understand that we are in their
corner.” What about us? How can we
engender a feeling of pride and loyalty
besides at pep rallies? How can we
elicit a feeling of ownership in all
constituencies?
It’s important that teachers, stu-
dents, and parents know that I am
their advocate. I need to ask questions,
and I need to listen so that they can
help me frame what happens at the
school, not just participate in it. It’s
efficient to make a quick, unilateral
Far from being a human
surveillance camera,
this principal was
practicing a potent
variety of leadership.
the work of the group (Sergiovanni,
1999).
Q Schools are communities of
learners. Every learner in the school
can improve his or her practice—or
even reinvent himself or herself. The
leader is the chief learner.
A Steady Presence
This “cultural leader” was a steady
presence in the lives of those who
traveled the halls around him, pro-
viding a smile, an affirmation, an
encouragement. His predictable figure
in the arterial flow of the school day
decision, but dialogue is always better
than monologue. “Poor communi-
cation is generally not a matter of mis-
communication,” says Meyer. “More
often, it involves taking away people’s
feeling of control.” My answer is rarely
better than our solution.
Setting the table means more than
arranging silverware. Meyer also talks
about the importance of having the
right staff: “The only way a company
can grow, stay true to its soul, and
remain consistently successful is to
attract, hire, and keep great people.”
Amen to that! I found it interesting
that Meyer identifies the same essential
qualities in his employees that I value
in my teachers—optimism, intel-
ligence, work ethic, empathy, self-
awareness, and integrity.
I also agree with his point that “a
mark of a champion is to welcome
scrutiny, persevere, perform beyond
indicated how much he valued the
learners in that community.
Of course, he did many other con-
sequential things—in classrooms; in
conversations with teachers, parents,
and students; and in leadership-
sharing activities—to become a
symbolic and cultural leader. But his
hallway-standing habit stuck with my
colleague because it reflected a leader
who understood that his effectiveness
derived from his ability to know and
be known by those he sought to lead—
to trust and be trusted.
It’s interesting how many parallels
there are between the approach of the
principal in the hallway and that of
teachers who seek not so much to
manage their students as to create a
culture in which every member is dig-
nified by his or her contribution to a
shared classroom community.EL
Reference
Sergiovanni, T. (1999). Rethinking
leadership. Glenview, IL: Skylight.
expectations, and provide an excep-
tional product—for which forgiveness
is not necessary.” More and more, I
understand that receptivity to feedback
and a willingness to reflect are integral
to growth. Inherent in that receptivity
is an ability to learn from mistakes
rather than seeking to avoid them at
all costs.
Reflecting on the difference between
service and hospitality helps me
think about what needs to happen
throughout the entire education
process instead of just focusing on the
outcomes. And improving the process
will help us achieve those outcomes. I
know that I would enjoy talking with
Danny Meyer about organizations and
culture. And what a treat it would be
to eat at one of his restaurants!
What about you and your school?
With whom could you begin a dialogue
about service versus hospitality? EL
ASCD / WWW.ASCD.ORG 91
Tell Me About . . .
The Most Effective Assessment You Have Used
Student-Response Technology
By using technology for immediate formative
assessment, I can give students timely feedback
and change lessons on the fly to address
student needs. In my 8th grade English lan-
guage arts classroom, I often use the Socrative
student-response system (http://socrative
.com) to ask students multiple-choice or short-
answer questions at the beginning of class
about the novel they are reading. They can
use iPads, laptops, or smartphones to answer
the questions; and the program immediately
sends me a report with student responses that I
can use to address comprehension issues right
away. The last time my students took one of
these reading check-in quizzes, for example,
it showed that almost half of them did not
understand how one of the plot events affected
the protagonist’s characterization. As a result,
I changed my lesson for the day to focus on
indirect characterization.
—Kate Lewis,
8th grade English language arts teacher,
Shrewsbury Public Schools, Massachusetts
Illustrated Mind Maps
I have my 8th grade social studies students
create illustrated mind maps—diagrams that
show with pictures what they know about a
key concept. For example, to create a mind
map of a U.S. Civil War battle, students need
to convey all of the information they’ve learned
about that battle with minimal text. (A large
key might indicate that the battle was the “key”
to victory, a graph representing the number of
soldiers might reveal one side’s advantage, and
so on.)
To create these mind maps, students need
to determine what they know and then choose
a way to represent the information. Both the
process and the product reveal to me the depth
of a student’s learning. These assessments can
be used formatively throughout a unit—with
students adding information as they learn
92 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
more—and also as a summative assessment at
the end.
—Laura Putinski, curriculum director/teacher,
Fairfield Christian Academy, Lancaster, Ohio
A Reflective Essay
The final exam for my freshman composition
students is a reflective essay. Students use
examples from their own work during the
semester to show how they have grown as
writers, how their approach to and attitude
about writing have changed, and what writing
goals they have for the future. This is, hands-
down, the best piece of writing most of them
do all semester. I use the results not only to
evaluate their readiness to move on in our
writing program, but also as valuable feedback
for the course itself. Each semester, the course
changes in response to the students’ comments.
—Renee Moore, instructor of English,
Mississippi Delta Community College,
Cleveland, Mississippi
One-on-One Conversations
In my language arts classroom, the most useful
assessment is one-on-one conversations with
students about their reading and writing.
Working together, students and I set individual
learning goals. I use Evernote (www
.evernote.com) to record the conferences and
take photos of students’ notebooks and work
samples. I use the results of these confer-
ences to determine students’ progress toward
learning targets and to plan instruction based
on their needs.
—Donalyn Miller, 5th grade ELA/SS teacher,
Northwest Independent School District,
Fort Worth, Texas
Exit Tickets
The informal use of exit tickets has been
a successful method of assessment in my
classroom. I have a pocket chart mounted on
the wall right next to my classroom door. Each
day, students write on an index card a brief reflection about
their learning, either in response to a specific prompt from
me or on their own. I collect and review the index cards
daily. Sometimes I use the information as fodder for the
next day’s class meeting, and other times I use it to group
students by their strengths and challenges for instruction.
We keep these exit tickets from month to month to reflect
on personal growth throughout the school year.
—Laura Grayson, teacher,
Robinson Elementary, Kirkwood School District,
Kirkwood, Missouri
Weekly Check-ins
At the end of the week, I have each student summarize on
a class Google doc what he or she learned relative to the
weekly learning goals. I usually showcase selected student
answers in class (anonymously of course) and make con-
nections to the new learning for the week. This assessment
can show me patterns of misconceptions among students.
—Andrew Ashcraft, teacher,
Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township,
Indianapolis, Indiana
Self-Evaluations
The most effective kind of assessment I use in my classroom
is student self-evaluation. If we prepare students by giving
them clear instructions about how to reflect on their
progress or their completion of a task, they will almost
always diagnose their own strengths and weaknesses accu-
rately. Recently, a self-evaluation exercise on a persuasive
essay allowed my 9th grade literature students to volunteer
comments ranging from the practical (“I need to start
wearing my glasses—I can’t see the whiteboard and made
some mistakes I could have avoided”) to the thoughtful (“I
found this too easy. I need to work on challenging myself to
use a deeper vocabulary”). Student self-evaluation enables
me to see where I need to target reteaching and improve my
content or teaching style.
—Liz O’Neill, chair of English,
Saint Agnes School, Saint Paul, Minnesota
To read more reader stories about assessment, see the
online version of this article at www.ascd.org/el0314
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Better teaching, deeper learning

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 General Membership Vote:
The Results
ASCD’s auditor has certified the ballots cast in a recent
vote on proposed changes to ASCD’s Constitution. ASCD
Community in Action
members have approved those changes.
Join the Conversation
ASCD invites educators worldwide to discuss the topic,
“How do we cultivate and support teacher leaders?” This
ASCD Forum discussion, which began January 15 and will
run through April 11, is an educator-driven conversation
designed to give everyone a voice, both online and face-to-
face.
To get involved, go to www.ascd.org/ascdforum, join the
conversation on Twitter with the #ASCDForum hashtag, or
come to ASCD Annual Conference session #2124 (March
16, 8:00–9:00 a.m.) for a face-to-face ASCD Forum conver-
sation hosted by ASCD President Becky Berg.
An Affordable Alternative
Twenty-one sessions from ASCD’s 2014 Annual Con-
ference and Exhibit Show will be available to the public
through live streaming. The live stream option offers
global educators an accessible and affordable alternative
to attending ASCD’s 2014 Annual Conference, which will
take place in Los Angeles, California, March 15–17, 2014.
Virtual attendees may log in during or after the con-
ference to gain access to more than 30 hours of content
from such thought leaders as Daniel Pink, Sir Ken Rob-
inson, Robert Marzano, Jane McGonigal, Tony Wagner,
and Grant Wiggins.
The live stream option will integrate the ASCD EDge
social networking community and will be viewable on
standard PCs and Macs, as well as on most iOS (iPhone,
iPad, iPod Touch) and Android devices. Most sessions will
also be available to participants in an archive for up to six
months after the event. However, three key sessions—by
Pink, Robinson, and McGonigal—will only be viewable
live. ASCD encourages participants, when possible, to view
these and other sessions live.
To register for the live stream option, visit http://ascd.
events27.com/ascd2014. The cost is $129 for ASCD
members and $159 for nonmembers. For bulk registra-
tions, contact the ASCD Service Center at 1-800-993-2723.
All paid, in-person conference registrants will have
access to the livestreamed sessions as part of their con-
ference registration fees. To register for the 2014 Annual
Conference and Exhibit Show, visit http://ac14.ascd.org.
New from ASCD:
Arias on Assessment
Need concise answers to pressing
problems you face in education? Need
something you can read in one sitting?
Try these two offerings from ASCD’s
Arias collection:
Q Grading and Group Work: How
Do I Assess Individual Learning When
Students Work Together? (2013).
By Susan M. Brookhart. Stock No.
SF113073.
Q Digital Learning Strategies: How Do
I Assign and Assess 21st Century Work?
(2013). By Michael Fisher. Stock No.
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The print books are available for
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ASCD’S MISSION STATEMENT
ASCD is a global community dedicated to
excellence in learning, teaching, and leading.
ASCD’s innovative solutions promote
the success of each child.
ASCD BOARD OF DIRECTORS
BECKY BERG, PRESIDENT; NANCY GIBSON,
PRESIDENT-ELECT; DEBRA HILL, IMMEDIATE PAST
PRESIDENT; GENE R. CARTER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
ASCD; MARIE ADAIR; RONAL BUTLER; SUSIE CARR;
LARRY CARTNER; JON CHAPMAN; JUDITH GOLDEN;
JOSEPH GOODNACK; MARY KAY KIRKLAND;
DAVID MATHIS; MATT MCCLURE; PASI SAHLBERG;
PAM VOGEL; JUDITH ZIMMERMAN
ASCD EXECUTIVE STAFF
GENE R. CARTER, Executive Director
ERIC BELLAMY, Deputy Executive Director
JUDY SELTZ, Deputy Executive Director
RICHARD PAPALE, Acting Chief Program
Development Officer
WWW.ASCD.ORG 95
 EL
Great teachers are habitual
students of their students.
They assess continually
to understand the human
beings that they teach.
—Carol Ann Tomlinson, p. 10
Recurring, nonthreatening
feedback encourages
students to persist.
As some teachers say,
“You don’t know it yet.”
—Cathy Vatterott, p. 39
Takes on
If we don’t teach students how Thoughtful
to plan, assess, and refine their
own work, performance on
the Common Core–aligned
Assessment
tests will improve little.
—Harvey F. Silver and
Matthew J. Perini, online
The more time that elapses
between a student response
and teacher feedback,
the less metacognitive
reflection takes place.
—Sonny Magaña and
Robert J. Marzano, p. 82
96 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / MARCH 2014
Takeaways
If students answer all the
teacher’s questions correctly,
the teacher is surely
wasting the students’ time.
Worthwhile questions cause
students to struggle
and think.
—Dylan Wiliam, p. 16
When we give students the
8
impression that we value the
right answer more than critical
thinking, we may drive them to
take shortcuts and cheat.
—Cris Tovani, p. 50
Surfacing student
misconceptions is at
the very heart of the
learning process.
—Brent Duckor, p. 28
Grading too soon can lead
students to the damaging
inference that if you
have to try, you aren’t
smart in the subject.
—Jan Chappuis, p. 20
Source: The collective wisdom of authors published
in the March 2014 issue of Educational Leadership,
“Using Assessments Thoughtfully” (Volume 71, Issue 6).
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