Assessing and Analyzing Student Data: What are Common Formative Assessments?

   
     There has been much discussion and action recently in the state of Massachusetts and nationally regarding common assessments.  There are many who feel that high stakes tests such as MCAS do nothing more than cause students a great deal of stress.  On top of this, the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education is now requiring school districts to develop "district performance measures (DDMs)" which will serve to monitor student progress and instructional effectiveness on a much more frequent schedule.  While the debate over whether there is too much testing in schools continues, one thing is for certain, assessments, if developed and administered correctly, can give educators a wealth of information to help students improve.
     DDMs can also be looked at as "common formative assessments."  Common formative assessments are relatively short in length, but are suppose to focus on the "power standards" of a course so that teachers can measure student progress on state standards, modify instruction if needed or remediate students sooner, rather than later.  To put it more simply, MCAS is the end of the year, summative assessment and common formative assessments are the diagnostic tests given throughout the year to ensure that students are making progress on state standards.  The data these assessments produce are much more targeted and comprehensive then just examining a student's grade on a regular classroom quiz or test.
     Common formative assessments also serve to ensure that students are consistently receiving the content information that is defined by state standards across classrooms.  This year, the ELHS staff is working to create common formative assessments to also allow teams of teachers to analyze student scores and responses to see where we can offer more assistance.  We started the year with a common "open response" assessment that measures a student's reading comprehension and writing skills.  This is an area that has been identified as an area of need for our students across the board.  This short assessment requires students to read a passage related to their course content and then respond to a prompt using evidence from the reading.  Last year, we developed a school wide writing rubric to help teachers  assess and communicate expectations for this type of writing (see below).
     As the year continues, our staff will work together to develop more of these types of assessments and analyze the data together so that we can improve teaching and learning at ELHS and meet the state mandates for data collection and analysis.