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-Government document that guides what educators must instruct

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Off-campus education provides opportunities for junior and senior high school students to explore and expand their career interests, skills and knowledge related to work and other life roles.

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How to build a rubric. Building good rubrics guide

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Rubric Materials - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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Building Better Rubrics! Resource Links to Support Building Better Rubrics Rubric Templates Rubric Template (download Word document) Rubric Template (enlarged) (download Word document) Workshop Tools Rubriques Rubriques - Tools Rubriques - Templates Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (download Word document) Gabarit grilles d'évaluation (version agrandie) (download Word document)

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Samples of rubrics

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Building rubrics. Using proper terms

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Article about rubrics. Building, purpose etc.

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Brookhart - What are Rubrics and why are they important.docx

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Why The Label Exceeds Standards Doesn't Work

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Why The Label Exceeds Standards Doesn't Work

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Article about if teachers should use "excelling" as part of assessment

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Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work

Today's guest post is written by Thomas Guskey, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky.

Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance. When the number of levels climbs to five or six, however, the consistency of teachers' rating diminishes rapidly.

In choosing labels for these levels, many begin by describing level 3 as "Proficient." This level of performance means the student has achieved the learning target and mastered the standard. Level 2 is typically considered "Progressing" or "Approaching" mastery of the standard, and level 1 is deemed "Struggling" or "Needs Improvement." The challenge comes in labeling the highest, level 4. 2

Some educators believe that level 4 should designate a truly exceptional level of achievement - the student whose performance "knocks your socks off." They use this level to recognize students who do something special related to the standard or demonstrate genuinely outstanding performance regarding the standard.

Others believe level 4 should describe performance at a more complex or more advanced level with regard to the standard. They use the label "Exceeds Standard" to indicate the student has gone beyond or above what was expected. In other words, these students have achieved at a higher and more sophisticated level. But while seeming reasonable, serious communication problems often arise when educators try to clarify the meaning of "Exceeds Standard" to students, parents, and fellow educators.

Evidence gathered from parents and families shows that many find the label "Exceeds Standard" to be vague and difficult to interpret. The message it implies to them from educators is: "More than we expect, but we cannot tell you precisely what that is until we see it!" Such imprecision troubles parents, especially those who encourage their child to strive for the highest grade possible in every subject.

From a practical perspective, "Exceeds Standard" presents additional difficulties. In most standards-based environments, mastering a standard means hitting the target. It signifies achieving the goal and learning what was expected. Olympic archers who place their arrows in the center of the bulls-eye from a distance of 70 meters, for example, have "hit the target." They have achieved the goal and accomplished precisely what was expected.

How then could an Olympic archer ever "exceed" the standard? How would the archer achieve at a more advanced or higher level? Maybe we could make the bulls-eye smaller or move the target further away from the archer, making it more difficult to hit the bulls-eye.

The problem with that, however, is it changes the standard. As soon as you make the task more difficult or move the learning expectation to a higher and more advanced level, you have changed the standard and altered the goal. Students who achieve at that level have not really "exceeded the standard." More accurately, they have mastered a different standard. If you want archers to hit smaller bulls-eyes from a greater distance, then that becomes the new standard for archers.

Some argue that "Proficient" can imply placing arrows near the bulls-eye while "Exceeds Standard" means actually hitting the bulls-eye directly. But does "Proficient" then mean "almost" hitting the target? Is "getting close" sufficient? And if it is, then how close is good enough? Who makes that decision?

This interpretation problem also affects educators' who want to equate these distinctions to percent correct on assessments. On an assessment designed to measure students' ability to solve single-digit addition problems, for example, they might designate students who get 80% correct to be "Proficient," while those students who answer correctly 90% or more are rated, "Exceeds Standard." But have students who get 90% correct truly "exceeded" the standard? 3

Others counter that the assessment for this standard should include double-digit addition problems as well. Students who answer the double-digit problems correctly can then accurately be rated as "Exceeds Standard." But again, this miscommunicates what is measured. With the inclusion of double-digit addition problems, the assessment clearly measures a different standard. The same holds true if "Proficient" requires students to "apply" what they have learned, while "Exceeds Standard" involves the higher level skills of "analyzing" or "synthesizing." The point is that you are now measuring a different standard.

The nature of specific standards makes things even more complicated. If the standard relates to students' ability to safely cross a busy street, for example, would anyone consider 80% to be "Proficient"? Or even 90%? What about being honest or telling the truth? And in these examples, how could students ever reach "Exceeds Standard"?

This does not imply that exceptional performance should go unrecognized. Not at all. A grade that denotes truly distinguished performance can be useful in many instances. But if such a grade is included in the grading system, then it must be associated with clear criteria that identify precisely how such a grade can be attained. Those criteria must be clearly communicated to students and parents alike, accompanied by illustrative examples of students' performance or samples of students' work, and agreed upon by fellow teachers.

With these criteria articulated and openly communicated to all stakeholders, labels such as "Distinguished," "Exceptional," or "Exemplary" generally serve intended communication purposes far better than "Exceeds Standard."

Connect with Tom Guskey on Twitter at @tguskey.

Check it out here:

Why the Label 'Exceeds Standard' Doesn't Work | Education Week

PostedOctober 17, 2014 7:30 A M by Peter DeWitt

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Why the label "Exceeds Standard" doesn't work | Thomas R. Guskey & Associates

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Educators implementing standards-based approaches to grading and reporting often struggle with how to label different levels of students' performance. Four levels of performance is the most common number identified. Most educators in the U.S. and Canada consider three levels to be insufficient in discriminating important differences in students' performance.

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Things to consider about rubrics. Should we use them- read on here.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Rubrics

Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments?

Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others?

Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades?

Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

If you checked "yes" for any (or all) of these questions, your current rubrics might be working against you rather than for you. Let's find out how to make rubrics more effective!

What are Rubrics?

A rubric, at its most basic, is a tool to define the expectations of a particular assignment with ways to indicate different levels of effectiveness in meeting those expectations. It is this last aspect, the gradations of quality, that differentiates a rubric from its simpler counterpart, the checklist. Even within the category of a rubric, there is lots of variety.

General rubrics describe expectations for a skill that can be generalized across assignments. Task-specific rubrics are, as their name suggests, geared toward a particular assignment.

The biggest distinction within rubrics, however, is between holistic and analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics provide a single score to summarize a student's performance on a given task, whereas analytic rubrics provide several scores for the task, one for each different category being evaluated. See examples of each kind here.

Anatomy of the Rubric

There are four main components of a rubric:

To illustrate, for an assignment from a high school literature classroom:

The task description is a ten-page research paper

The dimensions of the assignment include:

The descriptions outline what a student needs to do to get a certain score for a certain dimension

It is with these components themselves that we already start to see how a rubric could be clear and helpful or murky and frustrating.
SAMPLE RUBRIC

Benefits of Rubrics

What good can rubrics really do? A rubric, after all, is a sheet of paper that is all too easy for students to glance at once and then shove to the bottom of an overstuffed backpack. However, rubrics are more important than they seem.

Every time you make a rubric, you articulate your educational philosophy; you indicate where students are, where they can go, and how they will get there. As English Professor Emeritus Peter Elbow explains, by offering your students a rubric, you're telling them:

"You deserve to know more about my values as a particular reader: Here are the aspects of writing that I believe are most central to my idea of excellence."

- Peter Elbow, Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White
HOW DO RUBRICS HELP STUDENTS?
Rubrics have so much potential that even minimal engagement with them can yield great benefits.

As educator Heidi Goodrich Andrade explains, "If I were to simply circle boxes on a rubric and give it back with an assignment, I would still be providing more feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the work than if I had just assigned a letter grade, and it would not have taken me any longer."

The importance of feedback for student learning can not be overstated. In a 2015 study, rubrics that included individual advice on how to improve led to students with "significantly better performance in planning scientific experiments"; these students "perceived themselves as being more competent and were also more accurate in their self-evaluative performance judgments." That's exactly what Marco Learning hopes to achieve by pairing rubric-based scores with personalized, qualitative feedback about each student's areas of strength and areas for growth.

As educator and author Carol Jago points out, "feedback cools quickly." So anything you can do to speed up the availability of feedback for students matters.
METACOGNITION DEVELOPMENT
At their best, rubrics can encourage students to think critically about their own work and scores. It's a fairly common sentiment among students that teachers "give" certain grades rather than students "earning" them. These word choices reveal that students often don't feel involved in the assessing process; they feel as if it is being done to them rather than with them or by them. Having a clear rubric lets students in on the decision making process. Students better understand the criteria of each assignment, so they can begin to look at their assignments with the critical eye of a teacher, allowing them to understand their past mistakes and fix their current ones. One teacher found that students who assessed themselves with a rubric as they worked on a reading comprehension assignment scored higher on a content knowledge quiz afterward than students who did not use a rubric. The metacognition, or awareness of one's own learning strategies, that can result from familiarity with rubrics produces both more insightful learners in the long-term and less frustrated students when report cards come around.

TEACHERS MAKE BETTER DECISIONS
As Professor Timothy Brophy explains, rubrics are also helpful tools for teachers because they encourage "criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced" scoring. In essence, criterion-referenced scoring means that while grading, teachers ask themselves whether a paper meets the criteria of a certain score rather than consciously or unconsciously assigning grades based on the quality relative to the other papers in that class. In a vacuum, norm-referenced scoring might not seem that bad, but it seriously hinders teachers' ability to meaningfully compare scores across their own classes and across classes taught by several teachers. In addition, consistently comparing each paper to a fixed set of standards decreases the chance that a teacher will grade papers differently based on student preference, number of coffees consumed, decision fatigue, or any other factor that shouldn't affect student grades. Lastly, important nationwide tests like the AP English Language and Literature exams use criterion-referenced scoring systems, which should encourage teachers to grade similarly.
STUDENTS ARE TREATED MORE FAIRLY
Rubrics create a common language to speak about academic work, make the learning goal clear, and level the educational playing field. In this era of increasing diversity, this last point is an important one.

Researchers Kenneth Wolf and Ellen Stevens point out that first-generation students, as well as immigrant students and students from minority backgrounds, often don't come into school with the same academic assumptions as their peers. The clearer the learning target for these students, the more likely they are to meet it.

Since unconscious bias can also work against students most dissimilar to their teachers, comprehensive rubrics can also encourage fairness for all students.

Disadvantages of Rubrics

Although rubrics have many potential benefits for both students and teachers, a poorly constructed rubric can do more harm than good. Luckily, there are a number of predictable pitfalls that can be easily avoided if you know what to look out for.
EXTREME SCALES
Although the scale may seem like a fairly straightforward decision to make, there are many different options.

One teacher might use a scale of A-F, another might use the scale 1 through 5, and yet another might choose to use the words excellent, competent, and needs work as the scale. There is no right answer when it comes to using letters, numbers, or words for your scale, but there are a few choices that could lead to unproductive rubrics.

Scales quickly become ineffective when there are too many or too few options. For example, except for very basic assignments, using just a pass/fail scale will not provide you or your students with very much helpful information.

On the other hand, using a scale of 1 to 20 will make it harder to justify small differences, such as giving a student 13 rather than 14. Having three to five possible options on a scale is often effective and four is sometimes considered ideal.

That being said, one of the largest working scales in effect right now is the College Board AP English essay holistic grading scale from 1 to 9. Even so, this scale is still essentially a 5-point scale broken down into pairs: 9/8, 7/6, 5, 4/3, 2/1.

INCONSISTENT LANGUAGE
There are a number of considerations as well when it comes to descriptions of each dimension; parallelism and consistency are your friends here. For instance, let's say that your current rubric breaks down the dimension of citation in the following way:

level 1 describes a paper with incorrect citations

level 2 is a paper with sometimes accurate citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with complete citations

These levels have obvious differences, but the language isn't as clear as it could be. Choosing to describe either amount, frequency, or intensity across all parts of your scale will help to keep the language consistent automatically.

A revised version of the same rubric might look like this:

level 1 is a paper with few correct citations

level 2 is a paper with some correct citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with all correct citations

The parallel language (using "correct") of each description shows how all the levels relate to each other, easing comprehension for anyone who encounters the rubric.
NEGATIVE LANGUAGE
Another consideration when writing descriptions is valence. As researchers Tierney and Simon explain, using purely negative terms to describe lower levels on the scale can discourage students, particularly younger ones. Using words like "little," "slightly," or "seldom" will be less discouraging (and likely more accurate) than words like "none" and "never."
VAGUE LANGUAGE
Lastly, the criteria for each level should be observable and measurable in some way.

If I claim that students are supposed to "know" something, it is important to indicate what precisely that knowledge will look like. For example, I could specify in the rubric description that a paper with an argument that falls under Level 4 (always strong) must have a thesis that is defendable, specific, and evidence-supported. A paper that falls under Level 3 for argument (usually strong) will have a thesis that is only defendable and evidence-supported.

Without this kind of specificity, it would be easy for a student to argue that their paper meets Level 4 requirements rather than Level 3 requirements since "always" and "usually" can be vague and subjective terms.

How to Write a Rubric

Good rubrics are hard to write. Here are two simple strategies to make sure your rubrics are working well:
1) CALIBRATE WITH COLLEAGUES
An effort to construct effective rubrics is clearly important, but it can be difficult to tell how effective a new rubric is without discussing and revising it with colleagues. As Professor Timothy Brophy suggests, these sessions can be used to establish minimum scores for passing and develop benchmark papers for the rubric's scale.

Selecting six pieces-two high scores, two medium scores, and two low scores-is often a helpful way to show the students what papers look like on each part of your scale. College Board provides three anchor pieces (high, medium, and low) for all previously released AP essays as an example of what this might look like.

If you pass out the benchmark pieces to your department without scores and have the other teachers score them blindly, this meeting can turn into a productive discussion about how to increase grading reliability across classes.

A similar brainstorming and revision session can be helpful if you are trying to adapt previously existing rubrics-whether from another teacher or from the Marco Learning's rubric creator - for a new project.
2) REVIEW ACTUAL SCORES
Discussing rubrics after their implementation can also help teachers analyze grade breakdown.

If 75% of your students are receiving a two on a four-point scale for organization, that might be an indication that you are grading too harshly and/or the students need a review on how to arrange their thoughts. Marco Learning provides lots of this data automatically for teachers along with our qualitative feedback.

Having this quantitative data makes it significantly easier to see class-wide patterns; without a rubric, you might not realize that you are writing comments about organization on 75% of your student papers!

Conclusion

There are unlimited different ways to construct rubrics. However, not all rubrics are created equal. Rubrics with reasonable scales, consistent language, specific requirements, and positive descriptions are more helpful for students and teachers alike.

You can take an effective rubric to the next level by involving other people; refine rubrics with other teachers before their implementation, and take a day to talk your students through a new rubric. You can even go further and grade example essays using a rubric during class, an invaluable way to clarify learning goals.

By clarifying learning goals, we bring students closer to them, one rubric at a time.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Rubrics - Marco Learning

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments? Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others? Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades? Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

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Strategies for taking tests. Printable and downloads for your. classroom.

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Here are three basic test-taking strategies that elementary students should review prior to testing. Plus, download 10 free printable test-taking strategies resources that can be shared with students or hung in the elementary classroom.

Strategy 1: Review the Different Question Formats

To be successful on exams students must be familiar with the different question formats and feel comfortable moving between a scantron and their test packet.

A week or so before a high-stakes test, use specific test preparation strategies and handouts to review the different questions students will see on the exam.

It's always a good idea to review and practice multiple-choice (selected-response) strategies before an assessment. On multiple-choice tests, the vocabulary and layout of the answers can confuse students.

These are my six tips to help students feel like they Multiple-Choice Champions before a big test:

1. Reread the question. Make sure you understand what is being asked.

2. Come up with an answer to the question before looking at the list of choices.

3. Read ALL of the answers and cross out the choices that don't make sense.

4. Underline the section in the text or question that supports your reasoning.

5. Look carefully at similar-sounding answers. Find the more precise answer.

6. Select "All of the above" if two or three answers seem correct.

Download the Be A Multiple-Choice Champion Tip Sheet and hang it up in your classroom on the day of an exam. I guarantee your students will look at the poster sometime during the testing period to boost their confidence and recall strategies for answering multiple-choice questions.

Most schools have an acronym they use school-wide to help their students with open-ended responses. If your school has not adopted an acronym that is used throughout the school, I highly recommend you do. It promotes consistency as the students move from grade level to grade level. The acronym we use at my school is ACE:

Answer the question:

Turn the question into your answer and answer it

Cite an example:

Give a specific example from the text to support your answer

Extend your thinking

Give another example OR state another thought about the text that supports your answer

Help students remember how to answer open-ended responses with the ACE Open-Ended Responses Tip Sheet.

Finally, I review simple strategies that students can use to attack any question.

For older students, I have a list of suggestions for answering the various types of questions from multiple-choice to essay prompts.

For younger grades, I use a fabulous handout that delves into some of the strategies I discuss when reviewing multiple-choice questions and gives students concrete examples to look over.

This resource will show students the following strategies to puzzle out questions they may find confusing. It highlights the following strategies:

1. Substitute each answer in the blank

2. Justify answers my underlining information from the passage

3. Cross out answers that don't make sense

Strategy 2: Strengthen Student Vocabulary

Unfamiliar vocabulary in a literary text or a standardized test can confuse and/or discourage students.

Make sure your students are armed with the vocabulary strategies they need to come out victorious rather than feeling defeated after taking a test. Below are word strategy resources to ensure students come out on top!

Here are 10 terms students should know heading into a standardized test (words may vary depending on your state test). Download the 10 ELA Test Terms To Know Reference Sheet and review the words with students until you're confident they understand their meaning.

A similar download you may find useful is the 10 High-Stakes Test Terms to Know Poster. Teachers should incorporate these terms into classroom activities and should clarify how best to answer each question stem while the stakes are low.

For example, a teacher could ask an introductory question such as

"Infer from the reading on page 3 how Jimmy felt about his friends."

"Compare the reading we did for homework with the passage on the board."

"Analyze how Martha came to make the decision she did."

The last strategy/handout teaches students how to break down individual words and puzzle out their meanings. Here's an example using the word submersible:

STEP 1: BREAK THE WORD INTO SMALLER PARTS. LOOK FOR THE PARTS OF THE WORD YOU KNOW.

Submersible → sub mersible

What does the word sub make you think of?

You can investigate even further by asking, "Do subways and submarines have anything in common?"

Both are used for transportation and traveling from one point to another

Both are underground

STEP 2: LOOK FOR THE CONTEXT CLUES. WHAT DO THEY TELL YOU?

" Explorer, the submersible watercraft, sank deeper into the ocean."

From the passage clues, we know that:

Submersible is describing a feature of the watercraft.

The watercraft can travel deep into the ocean.

STEP 3: USE YOUR BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE.

I know a sub or submarine travels underwater.

The passage says, "...sank deeper into the ocean."
You can conclude that submersible means a vessel or vehicle that is capable of traveling and operating underwater.
This example is a great resource to share with students as a handout or you can hang up the poster on the classroom wall. Once students have reviewed this strategy, assign them words to break down using these three steps.

Strategy 3: Use Practice Prompts

As a literacy specialist, there are a few "key literary elements" that I make sure to emphasize in my teaching because I know they will help my students perform well.

Fortunately, these "key literary elements" support strong reading comprehension and should be focused on even if there were no standardized tests to be taken.

Available for download are reading practice prompts for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry texts. Download Sample Reading Prompts for Standardized Test Preparation for grades 3-5 now.

In Conclusion

Standardized tests can be stressful for students and teachers. Hopefully, these test-taking strategies for elementary students and accompanying resources will relieve some of the anxiety.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Vocab Gal's Favorite
Test Prep Resources

Strategies for Answering
Math Questions

Test-Taking Strategies Poster

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3 Test-Taking Strategies for Elementary Students (Includes 10+ Printables)

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Here are three basic test-taking strategies that elementary students should review prior to testing. Plus, download 10 free printable test-taking strategies resources that can be shared with students or hung in the elementary classroom. To be successful on exams students must be familiar with the different question formats and feel comfortable moving between a scantron and their test packet.

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Creating tests- this is a podcast too!

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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.

Assessments should give us loads of information about what our students understand, what they don't understand, and how well we've taught them. It took me years of teaching before I realized I was using my tests and quizzes to sort out, reward and punish my students, rather than measure and inform my teaching. I needed to make my assessments work harder for me.

So one year, I added an extra step while grading tests: I kept track of all the wrong answers on one page, tallying exactly which items were being chosen instead. Once I started doing this, I found myself far better equipped to respond to wrong answers: I could reteach specific concepts only to students who needed reteaching, rather than wasting everyone's time with unnecessary review. I could identify specific misconceptions students had about the material and get better at addressing those the next time around. I also became a much better test maker.

The best part about this system is you only need a pencil, an answer key, and a few extra minutes.

Here it is:

If you're already doing something like this, I would love to hear about it in the comments. If you have some kind of electronic reporting system that can crunch all these numbers for you and give you the information you need to move forward, awesome. If not, adding this extra step to your assessment routine will make a difference. ♦

Keep in touch.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

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When you give a test or quiz, do you basically just grade it, give it back to students, go over the answers, then move on? If you don't do anything else with the information, if you don't look carefully at how students answer your test questions, you're missing a BIG opportunity.

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Article on test construction- standardized tests.

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Is Standardized Testing a Bad Thing?

By Thomas R. Guskey, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky originally posted in Solution Tree Blog, December 16, 2020

"Standardized testing" is one of the most frequently used yet most commonly misunderstood expressions in education today. Some consider standardized testing to be an important, foundational component in any school improvement effort. Others believe it is a disruptive process that serves mainly to narrow the curriculum, stifle the creativity of teachers, and limit learning opportunities for students.

In truth, standardized testing is inherently neither good nor bad. It is simply a way of gathering data that involves measurement of an attribute or trait in a consistent or "standard" manner.

A standardized test includes the same or comparable items administered and scored in the same way. In other words, all individuals take the test under the same conditions, their performance is evaluated using the same methods, and scores are determined in the same manner. "Standardizing" the testing conditions doesn't remove the influence of those conditions on examinees' performance; it simply ensures those conditions are the same for all examinees. In this way, results can be used to make comparisons of individuals over time or among different groups of individuals who take the test in different settings.

Standardized testing can involve any assessment format. Many standardized tests are timed assessments composed primarily of multiple-choice items, like AP exams, IB assessments, and the SAT and ACT. These types of assessments are widely used because they yield the greatest amount of information on examinees in the least amount of testing time and at the least expense. But common formative assessments, skill performances, and projects scored with a common rubric can be considered standardized tests as well. So too are personality inventories and professional certification exams. In the area of health, tests of blood pressure and heart rate are also standardized tests.

The problems most people associate with standardized testing come not from the form of the test or testing procedures, but from how the results are interpreted and used. These are issues of validity.

Unlike what most people think, validity is not a characteristic of a test itself, and no test is fundamentally valid or invalid on its own. Rather, the results from a test can be interpreted and used in valid or invalid ways (Shepard, 2005). For example, a mathematics test composed of items that require only basic numerical calculations would be a valid test of examinees' computational skills, but it would not be a valid test of their mathematical reasoning or skill in solving complex math problems. Invalid interpretations of test results occur most frequently when a test designed for one purpose is used for another purpose for which it was not intended.

All tests are designed for a specific purpose. The SAT and ACT, for example, are designed to maximize differences among students in their knowledge and skill in specific subjects for the purpose of college admission decisions-and both do that well. In other words, they are purposefully constructed to yield the largest possible variation in students' scores, in order to facilitate the decision-making process. If many students score the same on an assessment, it is difficult to distinguish among those students. So both the SAT and ACT are developed specifically to spread out students' scores and provide the broadest range of scores possible. The ideal item on these tests is one that only 50 percent of students answer correctly, because that provides maximum discrimination and the greatest variation in scores.

To serve this purpose, the SAT and ACT are devised to be "instructionally insensitive" (Popham, 2007). This means that if a particular item measuring a vitally important concept is taught by teachers so well that nearly all students answer the item correctly, that item is typically eliminated from the test. Why? Not because it is a poor item or because it addresses an inconsequential concept, but because it doesn't serve the test's primary purpose of discriminating among students.

To measure how well students have mastered a particular curriculum, however, requires an "instructionally sensitive" test. Such a test must be well-aligned with the curriculum and measure precisely what students were expected to learn and be able to do. If instruction is effective, then all students would be expected to perform well on the test and attain the same high scores. In other words, with an instructionally sensitive test, effective instruction would serve to minimize the differences among students. Its purpose is not to spread out students' scores but to verify students' level of achievement with regard to the curriculum.

Hence, it makes little sense to use the results from instructionally insensitive tests like the SAT and ACT, known to be poorly aligned with the school's curriculum and designed primarily to maximize differences among students, to evaluate the quality of a school's instructional program. This is not the purpose for which these tests were developed and not what they are designed to do. Using SAT and ACT results in this way is a prime example of invalid interpretation and use of standardized test results.

Standardized testing is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Standardized test results provide important and reliable information that can be highly useful to educators at all levels. But that information also has important limitations. To ensure validity in interpretation and use, educators must know the purpose for which a standardized test was developed and use results for that specific purpose only. Especially in high-stakes situations, using standardized test results for purposes other than that for which the test was designed is not only inappropriate and invalid, it also can have serious negative consequences for schools, teachers, and particularly for students.
References
Popham, W. J. (2007). Instructional insensitivity of tests: Accountability's dire drawback. Phi Delta Kappan, 89(2), 146-150.

Shepard, L. A. (2005). The centrality of test use and consequences for test validity. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 16(2), 5-24.

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Is Standardized Testing a Bad Thing? - Thomas R. Guskey & Associates

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By Thomas R. Guskey, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky originally posted in Solution Tree Blog, December 16, 2020 "Standardized testing" is one of the most frequently used yet most commonly misunderstood expressions in education today. Some consider standardized testing to be an important, foundational component...

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Article- view on why standardized tests are problematic

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15 Reasons Why Standardized Tests are Problematic

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It’s wonderful to see all the protests around the country against standardized testing. At Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, teachers are refusing to administer the Measures of Academic Pro

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Virtual meetings/sessions on rubrics

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There is still time to register for our upcoming session.
https://events.aac.ab.ca/register/?id=1

@CAschenmeier, @learningongoing, @rmarynow, @Mrs_Laf, @LiMeEv, @LearningIsMyJam, @LeanneoWatson, @GTKnox, @PLore957

#assessmentpractices #assessmentforlearning #AAC #VirtualPD #albertaassessment

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What's New at AAC? AAC Events are now open for registration! Click here to register for events! × Dismiss alert We have an awesome Fall schedule planned and a brand new registration platform! Follow the link below for session details and registration. Suggest a topic: info@aac.ab.ca SESSION LIST After-school sessions A comprehensive exploration of current ...

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Problems with assessment. TWITTER feed- many up to date and continuously adding to the this information.

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?
— Tyler Rablin (@Mr_Rablin) January 6, 2022

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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If you could narrow down your answer to the following question to just one thing, what would you say?

What is the problem with assessment practices in a typical classroom?

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Article and scenarios/examples about grading

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Dueck - Grading smarter not harder- Ch 1 Grading.pdf

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Article about why grades matter- it's not just a grade.

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Kunnath - Creating meaningful grades.pdf

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Article about grades. Diluting grades, counting grades.

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Educator information all about PAT's Provincial Achievement tests

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Overview

Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

determine if students are learning what they are expected to learn

report to Albertans how well students have achieved provincial standards at given points in their schooling

assist schools, authorities and the province in monitoring and improving student learning

The tests occur in January, May and June for English and Français/French language arts, math, science and social studies.

Some grade 9 students write PATs in January of each year.

Grade 9 achievement tests based on the Knowledge and Employability programs of study in English language arts, math, science and social studies are also administered.

The General Information Bulletin helps support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

PAT Test Schedule for 2018 to 2019 (PDF, 163 KB)

Local performance targets

Each school board in Alberta sets targets for school and board performance in provincial standardized tests.

Evaluating results in the context of these targets can help school boards identify which areas students need more help in to improve learning.

Tips for setting local targets

Consider past performance on each test.

Focus on a limited number of subjects at a time where performance can improve.

Collaborate with teacher colleagues across different grade levels.

Students' performance on tests reflects their learning in all years.

Teachers in all grades can contribute to setting targets.

Use school reports on achievement test results to identify which aspects of a subject need attention.

Focus on what supports students need to succeed instead of focusing on problems.

Expect to set different targets in different grades and subjects depending on past results and current priorities.

Collaborate with other schools to identify areas of common strength or weakness.

Keep students and parents informed and report to them on achievement targets and results.

Provincial tests are a useful tool but only one way to see how well a school is performing.

Schools and boards may also choose to set targets for other measures of student achievement according to their local needs.

Targets can also be set for goals that fall outside of student achievement and reflect local priorities and parent and community involvement.

PAT results

Schools are responsible for sharing preliminary PAT results with parents and guardians.

Every fall, schools receive the official Individual Student Profile (ISPs), which are kept on the students' records in accordance with the Student Record Regulation.

Interpreting results

Careful examination and interpretation of results help educators identify areas of relative strength and weakness in student achievement.

Teachers and administrators can use this information in planning and delivering relevant and effective instruction.

View the guidelines for interpreting achievement tests. (PDF, 31 KB)

PATs are only one of many ways to evaluate student learning and are not meant to replace day-to-day teacher observations and classroom assessment. They are sources of information that must be interpreted, used and communicated within the context of regular and continuous assessment by classroom teachers.

2017 to 2018 PAT highlights

Strengths and areas for improvement varied this year and are only one indicator of student abilities

The percentage of students reaching the acceptable standard is at a 5-year high in English Language Arts 6, Français 6, Science 6, Social Studies 6 and Science 9

Grade 6 math results improved with students performing significantly better on non-calculator questions in 2018 than in 2017

Performance on Grade 6 math problem solving questions improved from the previous year. There is a strong correlation of results on non-calculator questions and problem solving questions

PAT results by school and authority

PAT results are available for each school authority and individual schools.

Search the database to find 5-year reports for each writing period and participation rates for each school and authority or view the documents below:

Key educator resources

The information provided is intended primarily to support school authorities, school administrators and classroom teachers in implementing the Provincial Achievement Testing Program in their authorities and schools.

General resources

PAT forms

Toolkit for staff

Teacher involvement

Parent guide

Quest A+

Quest A+ (access to online practice tests)

Subject area resources

These resources are developed to support classroom teachers in understanding provincial standards in the form of statistical analyses of selected responses, examples of student work, scoring guides and released materials.

Contact

To connect with Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing:

Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays)
Nicole Lamarre, Director, Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Phone: 780-427-6204
Email: nicole.lamarre@gov.ab.ca

Address:

Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Alberta Education
6th Floor 44 Capital Boulevard
10044 108 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 5E6

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Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) are administered annually to all Alberta students in grades 6 and 9. These standardized tests reflect the essentials that all Alberta students are expected to achieve, regardless of school choice or location.

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Different assessment types to consider

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Performance Assessments - Alberta Assessment Consortium

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AAC Performance Assessments: Engage students in their learning Develop critical thinking skills Encourage innovation and problem solving Provide quality assessment evidence Are based on Alberta curriculum Some Performance Assessments are for Members Only, while others are open to everyone. Create Your Own Performance Tasks Check out "Developing a Performance Assessment Task" to guide you through ...

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Educator information about diploma exams

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Resources to help students prepare to write diploma exams and information for exam administrators.

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Educator information about assessments.

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Overview

Student Learning Assessments (SLAs) are digital tests administered at the beginning of the school year in Grade 3. They assess outcomes related to literacy and numeracy in language arts and mathematics in Alberta's previous Grade 2 provincial programs of study. Since Grade 3 students in 2022-2023 would have received programming based on previous Grade 2 programs of study in 2021-2022, it is still appropriate and useful to use the SLAs in 2022-2023 to inform teaching and learning.

SLAs contain 4 components:

Literacy - Digital questions

Literacy - Performance task

Numeracy - Digital questions

Numeracy - Performance task

The purposes of the SLAs are to:

improve student learning

help parents and teachers identify student strengths and areas for growth

School authorities have flexibility to administer SLAs. School authorities can also choose if all or some of their schools or classes within a school will participate, and to what degree participation takes place. School authorities are strongly encouraged to administer SLAs to Grade 3 students. If necessary, SLAs can be digitally administered within student residences. SLAs results will not be publicized nor be part of the Alberta Education Business Plan.

Important dates

School authorities that wish to participate in 2022-2023 can preview and administer the SLAs from mid-August to the end of October, in their language of instruction.

Grade 3 Francophone and French Immersion students only take the assessment written in French. These students may take the English Literacy Assessment any time after the administration of the French assessments.

All SLA digital questions and performance tasks will also be available for re-administration during the entire school year.

Resources

General Information Bulletin (PDF, 1.6 MB)

Literacy and Numeracy Information Bulletin (PDF, 1.5 MB)

SLA User Guide (PDF, 1.4 MB)

SLA Technical Requirements (PDF, 184 KB)

Quick facts - For teachers (PDF, 183 KB)

Quick facts - For school trustees (PDF, 791 KB)

Quick facts - For superintendents (PDF, 790 KB)

Quick facts - For parents (PDF, 211 KB)

SLA Evaluation - Executive Summary (PDF, 353 KB)

Provincial Assessment Directive (PDF, 600 KB)

Instructional videos

The images of the technical requirements and the Help Desk have not been recently updated. Updated information for both of these can be found on the web page.

How to access the teacher dashboard

Teachers learn how to set up an account and access the teacher dashboard for the Grade 3 SLA.

How to use the teacher dashboard

Teachers learn how to set up their class list, start the SLA, monitor for technical issues, and access performance task materials.

Promising practices

Teachers learn about simple solutions to common issues, including student access, devices and much more.

SLA application

Teachers and administrators can use the SLA Application to:

access the teacher dashboard

administer the SLA

find practice questions, released digital questions and performance tasks

Technical and administrative support

Contact the SLA Workforce Development Help Desk for technical assistance with the SLA application or with questions about how to administer SLAs.

How to find SLA results

Student results for digital questions are available within 24 hours of a teacher submitting them for marking.

Schools do not report performance task results to the government. Educators use the results to help make decisions to benefit student learning.

Educators

Educators can use the teacher dashboard in the SLA Application to find and print reports.

Sample reports (PDF, 3.5 MB) provide an overview of the print version of the individual student report, class report and superintendent report. The online interactive reports on the Teacher Dashboard provide the ability to filter information.

Superintendents

Superintendents can use the SLA Application's teacher dashboard to access an additional report that gives an overview of school performance in their school authority.

Parents

School authorities are expected to share student results directly with parents.

We encourage parents and guardians to speak with teachers to understand their child's result reports.

Provincial assessment programs, including SLAs, are meant to complement, not replace, day-to-day teacher observations and classroom assessment. They are sources of information that must be interpreted, used and communicated within the context of regular and continuous assessment by classroom teachers.

Connect with the SLA Workforce Development Help Desk:

Phone: 780-427-5318
Toll free: 310-0000 before the phone number (in Alberta)
Email:[email protected]

Connect with Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing:

Kelly Rota, Director, Student Learning Assessments (SLAs) and Provincial Achievement Testing (PATs), Alberta Education
Phone: 780-427-6204
Toll free: 310-0000 before the phone number (in Alberta)
Email:[email protected]

Nicole Lamarre, Director, French Assessment, Alberta Education
Phone: 780-422-3535
Toll free: 310-0000 before the phone number (in Alberta)
Email:[email protected]

Hours: 8:15 am to 4:30 pm (open Monday to Friday, closed statutory holidays)

Address:
Student Learning Assessments and Provincial Achievement Testing
Alberta Education
6th Floor, 44 Capital Boulevard
10044 108 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 5E6

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Student Learning Assessments (SLAs) are digital tests administered at the beginning of the school year in Grade 3. They assess outcomes related to literacy and numeracy in language arts and mathematics in Alberta's previous Grade 2 provincial programs of study.

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AB guide to delivering K-12 Education in Alberta- including assessment. Latest government information.

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This annual Alberta education guide contains key information and requirements to operate and deliver ECS to Grade 12 education.

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Article on fair assessment in Canada.

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Article on backwards design.

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Article on assessment. Triangulation for best practices.

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

To ensure that these three components of your course are aligned, ask yourself the following questions:

Learning objectives: What do I want students to know how to do when they leave this course?

Assessments: What kinds of tasks will reveal whether students have achieved the learning objectives I have identified?

Instructional strategies: What kinds of activities in and out of class will reinforce my learning objectives and prepare students for assessments?

What if the components of a course are misaligned?

If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both student motivation and learning. Consider these two scenarios:

Your objective is for students to learn to apply analytical skills, but your assessment measures only factual recall. Consequently, students hone their analytical skills and are frustrated that the exam does not measure what they learned.

Your assessment measures students' ability to compare and critique the arguments of different authors, but your instructional strategies focus entirely on summarizing the arguments of different authors. Consequently, students do not learn or practice the skills of comparison and evaluation that will be assessed.

What do well-aligned assessments look like?

This table presents examples of the kinds of activities that can be used to assess different types of learning objectives (adapted from the revised Bloom's Taxonomy).

Type of learning objective

Examples of appropriate assessments

Recall
Recognize
Identify

Objective test items such as fill-in-the-blank, matching, labeling, or multiple-choice questions that require students to:

recall or recognize terms, facts, and concepts

Interpret
Exemplify
Classify
Summarize
Infer
Compare
Explain

Activities such as papers, exams, problem sets, class discussions, or concept maps that require students to:

summarize readings, films, or speeches

compare and contrast two or more theories, events, or processes

classify or categorize cases, elements, or events using established criteria

paraphrase documents or speeches

find or identify examples or illustrations of a concept or principle

Apply
Execute
Implement

Activities such as problem sets, performances, labs, prototyping, or simulations that require students to:

use procedures to solve or complete familiar or unfamiliar tasks

determine which procedure(s) are most appropriate for a given task

Analyze
Differentiate
Organize
Attribute

Activities such as case studies, critiques, labs, papers, projects, debates, or concept maps that require students to:

discriminate or select relevant and irrelevant parts

determine how elements function together

determine bias, values, or underlying intent in presented material

Evaluate
Check
Critique
Assess

Activities such as journals, diaries, critiques, problem sets, product reviews, or studies that require students to:

test, monitor, judge, or critique readings, performances, or products against established criteria or standards

Create
Generate
Plan
Produce
Design

Activities such as research projects, musical compositions, performances, essays, business plans, website designs, or set designs that require students to:

make, build, design or generate something new

This table does not list all possible examples of appropriate assessments. You can develop and use other assessments - just make sure that they align with your learning objectives and instructional strategies!

CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!

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Align Assessments, Objectives, Instructional Strategies - Eberly Center - Carnegie Mellon University

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Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another.

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Digital Tools to Collect Formative Assessment

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Digital Tools to Collect Formative Assessment

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Article about digital tool usage.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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All about John Hattie! Resources, info., videos

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Find out more about John Hattie’s Visible Learning meta-study

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Teacher help/awareness. Excellent book!

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Feeling Seen

Feeling Seen: Reconnecting Relationships in a Disconnected World examines how and why humans are so disconnected right now, worse than we have been in the history of the free world. Dr. Jody looks at how we got so lost, and all the soul-ripping contributions to a disconnected world. Then, Jody deciphers with the reader a road map back home, back to each other, to discover how the simple act of acknowledgment can change the world. And then she unpacks the hardest part: when we (inevitably) lose our way again.

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Feeling Seen Feeling Seen: Reconnecting Relationships in a Disconnected World examines how and why humans are so disconnected right now, worse than we have been in the history of the free world. Dr. Jody looks at how we got so lost, and all the soul-ripping contributions to a disconnected world.

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Games, make your own or use theirs

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Kahoot! | Learning games | Make learning awesome!

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Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun to 1+ billion players every year at school, at work, and at home.

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PAY for this app.- similar to Kahoot

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Gimkit is a game show for the classroom that requires knowledge, collaboration, and strategy to win. Get started for free!

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Create your own quiz. Any type/any info. Like PP slideshow

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The evidence is in the practice

ESSA Level 3 correlation evidence in math and ELA, earned by teachers running frequent formative assessments.

When teachers run 30+ formative questions a week, the research is clear: they get more data-driven, their students get more engaged. Wayground is built to make that practice enjoyable ot run, attainable to fit a class period, and habitual enough to last past September.

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Quizizz is now Wayground | Teacher AI and Resources

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Find standards-aligned resources that engage every student. Wayground (formerly Quizizz) helps teachers differentiate instruction with AI and track student progress.

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Video recordings to share info. Great for all ages

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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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Games ap. Can make your own games. Points based/competitive if desired

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Sample rubrics

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More consideration of rubrics.

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments?

Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others?

Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades?

Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

If you checked "yes" for any (or all) of these questions, your current rubrics might be working against you rather than for you. Let's find out how to make rubrics more effective!

What are Rubrics?

A rubric, at its most basic, is a tool to define the expectations of a particular assignment with ways to indicate different levels of effectiveness in meeting those expectations. It is this last aspect, the gradations of quality, that differentiates a rubric from its simpler counterpart, the checklist. Even within the category of a rubric, there is lots of variety.

General rubrics describe expectations for a skill that can be generalized across assignments. Task-specific rubrics are, as their name suggests, geared toward a particular assignment.

The biggest distinction within rubrics, however, is between holistic and analytic rubrics. Holistic rubrics provide a single score to summarize a student's performance on a given task, whereas analytic rubrics provide several scores for the task, one for each different category being evaluated. See examples of each kind here.

Anatomy of the Rubric

There are four main components of a rubric:

To illustrate, for an assignment from a high school literature classroom:

It is with these components themselves that we already start to see how a rubric could be clear and helpful or murky and frustrating.

Sample Rubric

Benefits of Rubrics

What good can rubrics really do? A rubric, after all, is a sheet of paper that is all too easy for students to glance at once and then shove to the bottom of an overstuffed backpack. However, rubrics are more important than they seem.

Every time you make a rubric, you articulate your educational philosophy; you indicate where students are, where they can go, and how they will get there. As English Professor Emeritus Peter Elbow explains, by offering your students a rubric, you're telling them:

""You deserve to know more about my values as a particular reader: Here are the aspects of writing that I believe are most central to my idea of excellence.""

- Peter Elbow, Writing Assessment in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Edward M. White

How do Rubrics Help Students?

Rubrics have so much potential that even minimal engagement with them can yield great benefits.

As educator Heidi Goodrich Andrade explains, "If I were to simply circle boxes on a rubric and give it back with an assignment, I would still be providing more feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of the work than if I had just assigned a letter grade, and it would not have taken me any longer."

The importance of feedback for student learning can not be overstated. In a 2015 study, rubrics that included individual advice on how to improve led to students with "significantly better performance in planning scientific experiments"; these students "perceived themselves as being more competent and were also more accurate in their self-evaluative performance judgments." That's exactly what The Graide Network hopes to achieve by pairing rubric-based scores with personalized, qualitative feedback about each student's areas of strength and areas for growth.

As educator and author Carol Jago points out, "feedback cools quickly," so anything you can do to speed up the availability of feedback for students matters.

Metacognition Development

At their best, rubrics can encourage students to think critically about their own work and scores. It's a fairly common sentiment among students that teachers "give" certain grades rather than students "earning" them. These word choices reveal that students often don't feel involved in the assessing process; they feel as if it is being done to them rather than with them or by them. Having a clear rubric lets students in on the decision making process. Students better understand the criteria of each assignment, so they can begin to look at their assignments with the critical eye of a teacher, allowing them to understand their past mistakes and fix their current ones. One teacher found that students who assessed themselves with a rubric as they worked on a reading comprehension assignment scored higher on a content knowledge quiz afterward than students who did not use a rubric. The metacognition, or awareness of one's own learning strategies, that can result from familiarity with rubrics produces both more insightful learners in the long-term and less frustrated students when report cards come around.

Teachers Make Better Decisions

As Professor Timothy Brophy explains, rubrics are also helpful tools for teachers because they encourage "criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced" scoring.

In essence, criterion-referenced scoring means that while grading, teachers ask themselves whether a paper meets the criteria of a certain score rather than consciously or unconsciously assigning grades based on the quality relative to the other papers in that class.

In a vacuum, norm-referenced scoring might not seem that bad, but it seriously hinders teachers' ability to meaningfully compare scores across their own classes and across classes taught by several teachers. In addition, consistently comparing each paper to a fixed set of standards decreases the chance that a teacher will grade papers differently based on student preference, number of coffees consumed, decision fatigue, or any other factor that shouldn't affect student grades.

Lastly, important nationwide tests like the AP English Language and Literature exams use criterion-referenced scoring systems, which should encourage teachers to grade similarly.

Students Are Treated More Fairly

Rubrics create a common language to speak about academic work, make the learning goal clear, and level the educational playing field. In this era of increasing diversity, this last point is an important one.

Researchers Kenneth Wolf and Ellen Stevens point out that first-generation students, as well as immigrant students and students from minority backgrounds, often don't come into school with the same academic assumptions as their peers. The clearer the learning target for these students, the more likely they are to meet it.

Since unconscious bias can also work against students most dissimilar to their teachers, comprehensive rubrics can also encourage fairness for all students.

Disadvantages of Rubrics

Although rubrics have many potential benefits for both students and teachers, a poorly constructed rubric can do more harm than good. Luckily, there are a number of predictable pitfalls that can be easily avoided if you know what to look out for.

Extreme Scales

Although the scale may seem like a fairly straightforward decision to make, there are many different options.

One teacher might use a scale of A-F, another might use the scale 1 through 5, and yet another might choose to use the words excellent, competent, and needs work as the scale. There is no right answer when it comes to using letters, numbers, or words for your scale, but there are a few choices that could lead to unproductive rubrics.

Scales quickly become ineffective when there are too many or too few options. For example, except for very basic assignments, using just a pass/fail scale will not provide you or your students with very much helpful information.

On the other hand, using a scale of 1 to 20 will make it harder to justify small differences, such as giving a student 13 rather than 14. Having three to five possible options on a scale is often effective and four is sometimes considered ideal.

That being said, one of the largest working scales in effect right now is the College Board AP English essay holistic grading scale from 1 to 9. Even so, this scale is still essentially a 5-point scale broken down into pairs: 9/8, 7/6, 5, 4/3, 2/1.

Inconsistent Language

There are a number of considerations as well when it comes to descriptions of each dimension; parallelism and consistency are your friends here. For instance, let's say that your current rubric breaks down the dimension of citation in the following way:

level 1 describes a paper with incorrect citations

level 2 is a paper with sometimes accurate citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with complete citations

These levels have obvious differences, but the language isn't as clear as it could be. Choosing to describe either amount, frequency, or intensity across all parts of your scale will help to keep the language consistent automatically.

A revised version of the same rubric might look like this:

level 1 is a paper with few correct citations

level 2 is a paper with some correct citations

level 3 is a paper with many correct citations

level 4 is a paper with all correct citations

The parallel language (using "correct") of each description shows how all the levels relate to each other, easing comprehension for anyone who encounters the rubric.

Negative Language

Another consideration when writing descriptions is valence. As researchers Tierney and Simon explain, using purely negative terms to describe lower levels on the scale can discourage students, particularly younger ones. Using words like "little," "slightly," or "seldom" will be less discouraging (and likely more accurate) than words like "none" and "never."

Vague Language

Lastly, the criteria for each level should be observable and measurable in some way.

If I claim that students are supposed to "know" something, it is important to indicate what precisely that knowledge will look like. For example, I could specify in the rubric description that a paper with an argument that falls under Level 4 (always strong) must have a thesis that is defendable, specific, and evidence-supported. A paper that falls under Level 3 for argument (usually strong) will have a thesis that is only defendable and evidence-supported.

Without this kind of specificity, it would be easy for a student to argue that their paper meets Level 4 requirements rather than Level 3 requirements since "always" and "usually" can be vague and subjective terms.

How to Write a Rubric

Good rubrics are hard to write. Here are two simple strategies to make sure your rubrics are working well:

1) Calibrate with colleagues

An effort to construct effective rubrics is clearly important, but it can be difficult to tell how effective a new rubric is without discussing and revising it with colleagues. As Professor Timothy Brophy suggests, these sessions can be used to establish minimum scores for passing and develop benchmark papers for the rubric's scale.

Selecting six pieces-two high scores, two medium scores, and two low scores-is often a helpful way to show the students what papers look like on each part of your scale. College Board provides three anchor pieces (high, medium, and low) for all previously released AP essays as an example of what this might look like.

If you pass out the benchmark pieces to your department without scores and have the other teachers score them blindly, this meeting can turn into a productive discussion about how to increase grading reliability across classes.

A similar brainstorming and revision session can be helpful if you are trying to adapt previously existing rubrics-whether from another teacher or from the The Graide Network's rubric creator - for a new project.

2) Review actual scores

Discussing rubrics after their implementation can also help teachers analyze grade breakdown.

If 75% of your students are receiving a two on a four-point scale for organization, that might be an indication that you are grading too harshly and/or the students need a review on how to arrange their thoughts. The Graide Network provides lots of this data automatically for teachers along with our qualitative feedback.

Having this quantitative data makes it significantly easier to see class-wide patterns; without a rubric, you might not realize that you are writing comments about organization on 75% of your student papers!

To learn more about getting high quality feedback for your students and high quality data for your teachers, we'd be happy to talk.

Conclusion

There are unlimited different ways to construct rubrics. However, not all rubrics are created equal. Rubrics with reasonable scales, consistent language, specific requirements, and positive descriptions are more helpful for students and teachers alike.

You can take an effective rubric to the next level by involving other people; refine rubrics with other teachers before their implementation, and take a day to talk your students through a new rubric. You can even go further and grade example essays using a rubric during class, an invaluable way to clarify learning goals.

By clarifying learning goals, we bring students closer to them, one rubric at a time.

Visit our rubric creator site to create easy-to-use rubrics for your classroom!

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Do teachers in your school feel like students misunderstand assignments? Are you worried that some students are graded differently than others? Do your students (and their parents) often debate grades? Do your teachers complain about spending way too much time grading?

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Article about assessment strategies

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All about good assessments

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‎Assessment for Good: The Why of Performance Assessment on Apple Podcasts

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‎Show Assessment for Good, Ep The Why of Performance Assessment - 9 Dec 2019

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Language and Literacy Assessment Podcast

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Language and Literacy Assessment Podcast

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The future of assessments. Where will they go?

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This episode features guest Dr. Anthony Benners, Innovation Advisor & Senior Psychometrician for the NYC Department of Education. Listen to hear how new digital technologies are transforming language assessment in NYC schools, along with Dr. Benner's perspective on principles for promoting assessment innovation across domains.

SPONSOR:

This episode is sponsored by TAO, by Open Assessment Technologies.

TAO is the leading open-source digital assessment platform for education and career advancement, delivering well over 100 million tests, in more than 30 languages worldwide. Unlike proprietary, one-size-fits-all software, TAO gives you the freedom, flexibility, and control to evolve with today's learners and provide the testing experience that students deserve. To learn more about building better assessments with TAO visit www.taotesting.com.

Learn more about Beyond Multiple Choice and our events exploring the future of assessment at www.beyond-multiple-choice.com.

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the future of language and literacy assessment with dr. anthony benners

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beyond multiple choice: the future of assessment

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‎Beyond Multiple Choice: The Future of Assessment: The Future of Language and Literacy Assessment with Dr. Anthony Benners on Apple Podcasts

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This episode features guest Dr. Anthony Benners, Innovation Advisor & Senior Psychometrician for the NYC Department of Education. Listen to hear how new digital technologies are transforming language assessment in NYC schools, along with Dr. Benner's perspective on principles for promoting assessmen...

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Multiple different assessment podcasts different grades and levels to choose from

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Podcast Category: Assessment & grading - Teaching in Higher Ed

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Blended learning Connected learning Digital literacy Educational technology Online learning Open education

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Cultural diverse assessments. Great in different cultural areas

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This episode contains a keynote presentation from Beyond Multiple Choice's 2021 April seminar. It is titled "The Future of Assessment Depends on Elevating Culturally-Diverse Leadership" and delivered by Susan Lyons, executive director of the non-profit organization Women in Measurement.

You can find a transcript of the presentation here.

Further Resources:

Beyond Multiple Choice

Women in Measurement

Twitter: @susanclyons

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the future of assessment depends on elevating culturally-diverse leadership

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beyond multiple choice: the future of assessment

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‎Beyond Multiple Choice: The Future of Assessment: The Future of Assessment Depends on Elevating Culturally-Diverse Leadership on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This episode contains a keynote presentation from Beyond Multiple Choice's 2021 April seminar. It is titled "The Future of Assessment Depends on Elevating Culturally-Diverse Leadership" and delivered by Susan Lyons, executive director of the non-profit organization Women in Measurement. You can fin...

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27 Formative Assessment Tools to Use Now!

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27 Formative Assessment Tools to Use Now!

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Tools to formatively assess. TECH options here

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27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom

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In this post, you will find 27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom! Formative assessment is such an essential part of the learning process and student success, and many digital tools can help support this process.This list has a wide variety of features and options to help you solidify your formative assessment strategies! Many of the tools below are great for both formative and summative assessments.

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Top 10 Best Books on Educational Assessment

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Top 10 Best Books on Educational Assessment

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10 Books for educators to read on assessment

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rethinking teacher supervision and evaluation

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classroom assessment for student learning

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assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom

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classroom assessment: what teachers need to know

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top 10 best books on educational assessment - toplist.info

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Top 10 Best Books On Educational Assessment - toplist.info

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Children are frequently tested at school. What effect do the tests have on their learning? How can tests be made more equitable? Is it true that standardized examinations are far easier to administer in topics like arithmetic, where there is a definite 'correct' answer, than in more subjective disciplines like English?

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All about Rick and his philosophy! Seminars, books, resources for assessment

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One of the first Nationally Board Certified teachers in America, Rick brings innovation, energy, validity and high standards to both his presentations and his instructional practice, which include 39 years teaching math, science, English, physical education, health, and history, as well as coaching teachers and principals.

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Article on assessing writing- interesting!!!

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An introduction to 6 + 1 Trait® Writing, customized rubrics, student self-assessment, and peer editing.

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Fast Ways to do Formative Assessment- Edutopia

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Fast Ways to do Formative Assessment- Edutopia

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Article on completing formative assessments quickly

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.