Standards Based Assessments

Assessments based on the Standards

Assessments that are developed around the standards seem easy, but when you are developing your assessments, it can be easy to fall into old habits or do things the way you were taught. When developing your assessments, make sure that all things being assessed are in the standard. Questions should range from basic vocabulary to being able to develop their ideas, but all information should be from the actual standard. If questions are not directly in the standard, then they should not be on the assessment that determines a student’s grade, not even loosely based on the same idea, If you want to ask questions like this then do it in an informal assessment or while talking with the student. But I can not stress enough that according to SBG, if it is not in the standard, then it should not affect the student's grade.

Assessments should be tiered. When I started teaching we used Bloom’s Taxonomy, but it had various problems. Now Depth of Knowledge has replaced it, and I think it fits well with the scale of grading no matter if your scale is A-F, Master-Needs Revision, or anything more than pass/fail. Assessments are supposed to determine the level of understanding a student has on a particular standard. 

If your assessments are not tiered, then how do you truly know HOW MUCH the student knows? 

Experience has shown me that most teachers develop assessments with a lot of simple recall level 1 questions and a few understanding level 3 questions. Rarely are level 4 questions included and some teachers will emphasize level 2 questions. I challenge you to look at your assessments and see how many questions you have at the 4 different levels.   I label my questions so I know and so the student knows. This ensures I have a good mix, and the students understand what their grades will be and why.

Assessments need to be tiered, so you as the teacher understand what level each student is at. Only by knowing this can you truly increase each student's knowledge. Without knowing what level of understanding the student has, you could be leaving them behind or making them bored. Knowing allows you to group students and target the specific help that each student needs. Knowing allows you to see what grade they would currently have and be able to give the student the opportunity to increase their level of knowledge and therefore the student’s grade.

 Without tiered assessments you can not accommodate student needs.

Assessments should look like this…

What does the law of conservation of mass mean?

The picture above illustrates….

A scientist burns a log and captures all smoke and ashes from this log. If the log originally has a mass of 10kg, and the mass of the ashes is 6 kg, explain what happened to the remaining 4kg.

Assessments should not look like…

Who developed the Law of Conservation of Mass?

What year was the Law of Conservation of Mass developed?

Can mass be created or destroyed?

These kinds of questions are simple and do not relate to the standard. A student doesn’t have to know who created something or when to know that in chemical reactions the same atoms are there, but rearranged. 

The standards are not designed for memorizing facts, but for understanding concepts. 

Students should be able to identify a concept, be able to use this idea in some way and be able to make broader connections. Every standard has a concept, focus assessments on measuring their understanding of the concepts, and not the memorization of facts related to the concept. 

I intentionally make 10 different assessments in my unit, and not all have results that go directly into the grade book. Participation grades are not allowed in SBG, but some of my assessments are a part of their grade as long as they are making real attempts at learning. To clarify, my built-in assessments include:

I do not grade their initial ideas or conversations. These are a part of their grade as they do have to do them, but in my class, these are marked as complete for that level of understanding. I do not think a student's initial thoughts should affect their grade, and neither should simple conversations without defined rubrics. I do use them as assessments though, because I can see what the student already knows, and if I should go into immense detail because they already know something or should keep answers more simple. I can also identify misconceptions in previous knowledge and conversations. Conversations allow me to informally assess understanding while deepening knowledge, or correcting misconceptions.  Conversations are a good way for students to solidify the information they have learned, while the other student is being exposed to potential new information if you are doing an individual choice-based class as I do. The others are tiered and that grade does go into the gradebook. Although these grades are not averaged together. Instead, one grade replaces the other as the student gains more and more knowledge. 

The student should start the unit with limited to no knowledge, and their grade should only increase based on how much knowledge they gain. This is very different from a typical class. In many classes, a student may get 60% on the vocabulary in the beginning 80% on the reading, and 75% on the test, and these grades are averaged together, but over class time they have learned more and can identify more and their grade is less because they didn't know the information at the beginning. Instead, students' grades should be a current snapshot of what they currently know. By replacing the other grades as knowledge grows, then students' grades are a direct reflection of current knowledge without the bias of previously unknown knowledge. In this way, students' knowledge and grades increase continually. Students are less stressed about grades and have a better understanding as to why their grade is whatever it is, what they need to do to change their grade, and the focus of information if they need to review and study.