Viewpoints

Assessment-Driven Reform:
A Leadership Approach

From High-Stakes Testing to
Assessment for School Improvement

Although accountability for test scores may serve as a catalyst for change by focusing the spotlight on academic success and failure, it provides no substantial inputs into the system. Testing is primarily an outcome-measuring device. Test scores alone are not a sufficient motivator of change. They merely highlight the need for a process that can take the raw data that is collected, analyze it, use that data to inform decision making, and redirect resources to address areas of need. In effect, high-stakes tests are simply one tool that must be supplemented with a variety of inputs that are necessary for continuous school improvement.

A primary role for local education leaders in preparing for and responding to the culture of high-stakes testing is to "prime the pump." A district or school must have in place the capacity to respond to increasing calls for external accountability. Without a vision for long-term capacity building to move from a single focus on high-stakes testing to a culture of assessment for school improvement, test scores alone will do little to influence changes in instruction, practice, and eventually student performance.

The following five strategies can help school leaders support the use of assessment to promote successful teaching and learning.

1. Help everyone in the district or building speak the same language and share the same vision for what it means to be a good school and what accountability looks like.

The idea of norm sharing is new to many schools. Without shared norms and expectations, it is difficult to steer the ship in one direction or know what to do with the assessment data and what it might indicate. "School personnel must share a coherent, explicit set of norms and expectations about what a good school looks like before they can use signals from the outside to improve student learning," states Richard Elmore (2002), professor of educational leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

District and building staff need to have a shared understanding of the purpose of assessment data and the way it will be used to inform decisions about curriculum and practice. A shared understanding of the alignment of assessment, standards, curriculum, and instruction builds individual confidence in the system and lessens the likelihood of duplicitous instruction and testing in a school and district.

MAKING THE CONNECTIONS Alignment of assessments, curriculum, and standards is an essential component of school improvement. "When assessments are not aligned with each other, the curriculum, or the standards prescribed by the state or district, there is no sense that they are working together to provide an overall picture of student escapement Effective use of curriculum mapping can help alleviate the confusion," states Cromey (2000, p. 5). "Curriculum mapping is the comparison of what is taught in the curriculum to the standards adopted by the school, such as those delineated by the state or district." NCREL's Curriculum Mapping Web site is designed to assist school districts in their efforts to write new mathematics and science curricula. Users can access rich international mathematics and science curriculum maps from top-achieving nations.

2. Invest in teachers in order for them to respond to and implement change.

A study of schools and their use of assessment data (Cromey & Hanson, 2000) found that schools committed to creating a culture of assessment for school improvement involved teachers heavily in various phases of local assessment work and created time for teachers to regularly meet, plan, and discuss the relationship between the multiple assessments they use. According to Elmore (2002), "You can't improve a school's performance, or the performance of any teacher or student in it, without increasing the investment in teachers' knowledge, pedagogical skills, and understanding of students. This work can be influenced by an external accountability system, but it cannot be done by that system."

Elmore (2002) adds, "Test-based accountability without substantial investments in capacity—internal accountability and instructional improvement in schools—is unlikely to elicit better performance from low-performing students and schools." Testing alone cannot create change, but it does leverage the inputs necessary for such change.

In addition to focusing resources on other inputs into the school improvement process and given the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, local educators will be required to provide significant leadership that emphasizes long-term improvements and not just a reaction to testing requirements.

High-stakes testing alone cannot create change, but it does leverage the inputs necessary for such change.

3. Articulate the No Child Left Behind Act's call for annual testing—its purpose, its limitations, its benefits—to building-level staff as well as the community.

There will be questions, concerns, and confusion regarding the role of and implications for assessment. Local leaders play an important role in clarifying the new legislation for people within and outside the school building. Questions will emerge regarding funding, development and implementation of the annual tests, and accountability measures for the school, teachers, and students.

Local leaders can help others recognize the advantages that emerge from an annual testing system and the use of assessment to enhance teaching. Educators can pinpoint when students begin to fail, which subgroups of students are failing, and where they are failing. Timely feedback allows educators to help students who need help sooner. Targeted efforts can then be directed at those indicators.

Local leaders can help others recognize the advantages that emerge from an annual testing system.

4. Develop a school culture that is not only one of compliance with the testing but also one that actively uses assessment data as a valuable formative tool for identifying areas of strength and weakness as well as identifying those students of greatest need.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires that assessment data be disaggregated. Most states currently collect state test data for broad groups of students, but very few report out on the individual performance of students, scores for subgroups, or achievement gaps between groups of students (Snow-Renner & Torence, 2002). In addition, most teachers have little experience collecting and using formal data. "Currently, only a few states explicitly require competence in assessment as a condition for being licensed to teach," notes Rick Stiggins (2002), president of the Assessment Training Institute Foundation. Providing professional development aimed at increasing teachers' knowledge and experience in the use of data is one step that can be taken to improve educational outcomes.

Secretary Paige argues that disaggregated student data is central to truly leaving no child behind. In many schools, it is difficult to determine which students are not doing well until the data is disaggregated past the school average. "For the school to be making progress doesn't tell us enough about what the individual children are doing…. You won't know this until you disaggregate the data, past the average," states Paige. "Now that you know this, you have a responsibility to do something about this" (cited in WGBH Educational Foundation, 2002a).

Professional development to increase teachers' knowledge of data can help improve students' educational outcomes.

For local leaders addressing the annual testing component of the No Child Left Behind Act, success will be determined in large part by their ability to view testing in a new light. They need to move from viewing testing as a punitive, disconnected activity for students and schools to thinking of testing as a valuable tool in an assessment system that influences and leverages meaningful change for school improvement.

LEARNING TO USE AND APPLY DATA Successful school leaders collect and use data on an ongoing basis to guide their instructional decisions. Classroom teachers embed assessment of student learning into their instruction and adjust their lessons and strategies according to their ongoing learning data. Unfortunately, in-depth, reflective study of data by teams is difficult to carry out during the busy school year. As one solution, NCREL offers Data Retreats— opportunities for district- and school-level leadership teams to analyze school data and develop a databased plan for school improvement. These two- or three-day retreats lead a team of educators through reflective collaboration and illumination about their school's data. The goal is to develop a clearly focused school improvement strategy that brings about positive results. Setting time aside for a Data Retreat empowers school teams to build their dynamic for focused improvement based on their school's data. The Data Retreat process also models what these teams should take back to their school and carry out on an ongoing basis. For more information on Data Retreats, contact NCREL at 800-356-2735.

5. Provide teachers with the tools they need to compile and evaluate the evidence of student progress on a daily basis.

The most important challenge for teachers, schools, and districts is to support each student's journey toward proficiency in meeting established learning standards. However, extracting information from a student that demonstrates his or her progress toward the goal can be difficult. Ongoing observation of a child at the classroom level—day in and day out— may provide the most accurate information about what a child genuinely knows and what progress is being made. Classroom teachers are most qualified to give input on student progress toward meeting academic standards, but they need to be given the time, the training, and the support to provide more than just test scores. (For information on what one school district has done to address this issue, see "Taking Assessment a Step Further".)

The most important challenge is to support each student's journey toward proficiency in meeting established learning standards.

TAKING ASSESSMENT A STEP FURTHER Given the value of classroom-level assessment, Douglas County School District in Colorado has taken a proactive approach to creating a culture where frequent and multiple assessments of student progress drive changes in curriculum and instruction. District administrators there know that true education occurs through a multitude of moment-by-moment decisions made by teachers. Good educational decisions, they believe, can be made only by teachers who have a firm understanding of what their students know today. Because of its faith in "teacher judgments," the Douglas County district is building a system to support good teaching decisions by giving teachers the classroom tools they need to inform themselves. The district's system is rooted in what the administrators and staff call a body of evidence, which is defined as a set of student work that answers the question "What will convince my teacher and others that I am making progress toward or have met the checkpoints associated with a particular content standard?" The body of evidence for each checkpoint includes one or more required, district-produced assessments, called nacrenchor assessments, as well as optional district-produced assessments. It also includes other tests and work the teacher assigns to help gain greater understanding of the student's progress. The anchor assessment is only one piece in a body of evidence, but it is the key to unlocking the state standards and building a system of instructionally useful and ongoing measurements of student progress. Teachers plan their instruction backward, "unpacking" the complex skills underlying the checkpoints and making them explicit, both to themselves and to their students. By embedding the anchor and other model assessments into instructional planning (the anchor can be given at any point a teacher chooses during the year), teachers build a standards-based instructional year. Anchor assessments are given in every appropriate class in every school in the district, and so they become the focus of teacher discussions about the nature and quality of student work. Through these discussions, teachers collectively decide on the definitions of districtwide, standards-based achievement and then compile exemplars of student work to serve as models for both themselves and students. These exemplars provide another means of influence of the standards in daily instruction and feedback. By allowing teachers—those most knowledgeable about the students—to shape assessments and by providing those teachers with the skills they need, Douglas County School District has taken the need for assessment to a more meaningful level.