Facilitators: Linda Hanson and Linda Walker
Recorder: Amy Shultz
Discussions 1 & 2 - download in print-friendly format
What is happening currently happening in the area of writing assessment data?
- What are we doing?
- How are we doing it?
- Why are we doing it this way?
- How might this be viewed at different levels? Preschool – college
- How might different community or group perspectives vary?
Discussion notes
- Recurring big ideas from the discussion
- Quantitative data of ISTEP is a very small component of what we hope students can do.
- The underlying issue is professionalism of teachers and being genuine reflective teachers. You have to have buy-in.
- Teacher choice or collaboration?
- As a corporation you are almost at the whim of teacher’s.
- This is the heart of using data.
- We must talk about USING data. If you don’t like what ISTEP gives you, look at other things.
- It is important that pre-service and practicing teachers learn to collect, analyze, and use data to inform writing instruction.
Transcript
- How do we use writing assessment data?
- Expectations: Corporations look at data, scores, NWEA, I think writing and data don’t mix...
- Data drives much of what we do.
- Can be a positive reinforcement.
- How can we do data in a timely fashion? Respond timely
- What is Big picture
- ISTEP translating into grade level instruction.
- Developing our own data- looking at what students do and what they know.
- What does ISTEP data tell us? What does it not tell us?
- Look at what data we have, and develop the data we need to know.
- What are we doing now?
- ISTEP
- Grade level writing assessments (not all use this)
- We have created our own, but they are not driving instruction.
- Students get assessments back, but not in a timely fashion
- Was teacher driven
- Next step in pl 221, writing workshop, doing the same thing in other content areas...math
- Only 2 out of 6 teachers present use grade level assessments currently
- Use ISTEP rubric
- Grades meet and discuss prompts and scoring using ISTEP based rubic
- used to see if program is working, not to inform instruction,
- students do not get assessments back,
- began through teachers as a way to prepare for ISTEP)
- Ours was dropped due to lack of teacher support and was a top down expectation that only took teacher time without informing instruction.
- Needs to happen again with support.
- Intent was to write to ISTEP rubric 3x a year.
- We now have literacy coaches to help support future efforts
- Core 40 – grade 11 end of year assessment
- I don’t like the idea of measuring teacher performance by student performance.
- What happens to data?
- ECA data is accessed by teachers/admin. We don’t get a copy of what kids wrote...just a holistic score wd and lc score.
- No way to use with students – only see strengths as a group.
- Kids see it doesn’t count, so they don’t care.
- Right now schools are accountable. As we move forward, benefits of test will improve...
- Classroom teacher really collects data on a daily basis.
- Two scores that come back on ECA and ISTEP
- Tells us conventions and ideas.
- Doesn’t tell you much. Rubric is very generous. Can’t tell the difference between a 5 and a 6. I’ve see a 4...
- A big discussion about subjectivity and differences in scores on ISTEP ensued
- How many of you have looked at ISTEP essays and looked at the range?
- Does the ISTEP and ECA help you learn by looking at essays?
- Can we look at them to help us inform our instruction?
- I do notice a difference between 5 and 6 – in vocabulary
- Look at kids’ papers overall and see you need to work on leads...you have to have the writing in front of you to learn about your students. The scores don’t help.
- We must identify how data can reflect what we want data to do
- You are asking us if the rubric is fair.
- Do we have the data we need to inform instruction?
- We separate ISTEP evaluation from classroom assessing. We see ISTEP as summative, not formative.
- We need all sorts of tools.
- We’re doing this, but it’s not evident. It needs to be a public awareness, that ISTEP is not the only thing driving instruction. It’s more important.
- What data is derived from your classroom?
- Conferencing
- Student sharing
- Mini-lessons – workshop format
- Workshop format works ideally because you have to assess everyday.
- Collect data from kids - what do they know? Ask them!
- Establish a common language
- If instruction is not working, your kids will “tell” you –
- Do students have a sense of what you are assessing on?
- Assessment needs to be shared.
- Use rubrics as a part of teacher and peer conferencing.
- How do I have time to do all this?
- Do small assessments along the way.
- Breadth vs. depth I’d like to do writing workshop everyday.
- What bothers me about discussion – is that we “feel” formative has no stakes, and it is hard to communicate with a common language. But with summative – you have numbers.
- Assuming everyone is on board – some only think ISTEP is it.
- If it’s not for a grade the students won’t care.
- How many of you have had students generate a rubric to name qualities of good writing?
- All the time.
- Students have ownership of the language they are using.
- In a way that provides us analytical assessment.
- You have to tweak it. They make grammar a huge part of the grade.
- Many of you have student portfolios. Are you using them? Why portfolios as opposed to single writing?
- Lots of yes’s.
- To see growth – for students, teachers, parents
- Technically, we do it for our teachers.
- Because it helps them make decisions about instruction
- Different teachers put different things in portfolios.
- We have a standard list of assignments.
- I have kids write letters and they pick pieces for their own port. And tell why. From 3rd-6th.
- They are reflecting on their own growth.
- Evidence of writing process in portfolios. This supports what’s in the standards that can’t be demonstrated on ISTEP.
- It’s a more holistic look at child. The ISTEP is such a small part of the child. Kids put planning sheets, drafts, and final copy, so you can see from point a to z. You can see thought process.
- Portfolios have helped me to get students to take risks. “Let’s move on and try to write on new topics.” Helps them from plagiarizing themselves.
- They are much more personal and easier for parents to understand than trying to read ISTEP graphs.
- They also provide a way to put the ISTEP score in context. If it doesn’t match, you have other questions.
- ISTEP is drafting anyway.
- We have changed our portfolio to reflect on demand writing.
- That is interesting issue there is so much testing that is draft writing.
- Research says single samples of writing do not reflect what a student can do.
- Lots of efforts go into helping students deal with testing. The writing process is truncated on both ends.
- Writing on demand outside of education is different because you call on them to express info they already have. In real life there is a chance for revision.
- Prompt writing will help reveal weaknesses to improve future test scores.
- GRE is going online so you can’t go back to answers.
- Must remember what this test is looking for..
- Prompt writing is a genre you have to teach them. It’s not real world, and it is high stakes.
- We also teach it as a genre.
- Does it account for student’s cynicism about writing?
- Yes!
- It always surprises me that students just don’t care and just want to get through the writing for tests.
- I think teachers create that cynicism. They tell students they don’t have to pass it. “All you have to do to pass ISTEP is...”
- For HS school kids, kids will have to write to resumes (prompts)
- But kids are writing about what they know – themselves. It’s not timed. And the prompt is often something they don’t care about. Students don’t have choice or a stake in it.
- And they have the opportunity to revise.
- How real is prompt writing?
- We want authentic writing for authentic purposes.
- I want to caution about the way we have to apply for positions online. You have a limited time to apply when online. It’s to a prompt, with limited space. That’s authentic.
- Email is like that, too. You are writing immediately. You are judged by what you write.
- Employers are using graduate students to research people on My Space.
- Be careful on professional listservs.
- Do we want to say anything about data being positive, particularly when we have feedback?
- It’s a validation of the whole process for me.
- In end of year letters I look for language I’ve used in teaching. If I see it there, then I know they’ve learned it.
- We’ve used it to assess the program and we’ve seen a shift of scores. It’s been positive for our teachers. Now we’re leveling off and we’re looking to see what else we can do. We need to dig deeper. We must improve the skill level of each teacher... continuous professional development is imperative.
- I’ve been tracking kids 3-8 th . I’ve kept ISTEP from 3 rd grade on. Tracking just their scores...they were all passing. The kids scores went from 3,4,5 in 3 rd to all 4’s in 7 th. I wondered what was going on in writing program? I asked kids questions. I assigned numeric values to their responses on things like
- Did you conference? Never? Peers? Sometimes
- Edit? Sometimes.
- I took data and made graphs to compare student to student and saw gaps in instruction.
- ISTEP said they were doing fine, but they were making the same mistakes. There were gaps. I have graphs here to share. I developed my own data.
- You could see where instruction was happening and wasn’t. It was at both grade level and/or teacher specific as far as gaps.
- Our 4-6 th instruction was almost nonexistent. They did writer’s workshop without mini-lessons.
- They were assigning without teaching.
- How do you hold teachers accountability. It’s usually not the initiative that fails, but the support for the initiative. That’s a challenge from a corp. level.
- If you don’t see the data in ISTEP, you can see it in your own students. You can make it more formal by doing what I did.
SESSION SIGNIFICANT ISSUES - PRESENTED
- Quantitative data (ISTEP) measures a small component of what we want students to learn.
- Teacher collaboration / professionalism in being reflective practitioners is at heart of using data.
- Important that pre-service & practicing teachers collect, analyze and use data to inform writing instruction.
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