How can we design quality formative assessments?

I’d like to make four points about this. First, it is critical that your nine weeks tests are aligned to your pacing guides. If you had, say, 50 skills in the SOLs that you were going to teach by the time the SOL test was given, which is less than 180 days that you have, then you need three nine weeks divided into 50 skills. So, you’re teaching a third of them the first nine weeks; your test needs to assess that third. The second nine weeks you teach a third of the skills; you need to be sure your nine weeks test only assesses that third.

Now, my reason for suggesting the design in this manner, as opposed to cumulative, is that at the end of the first nine weeks I hope to use that [data] to design a remediation program that’s going to enable the system and the teachers to address those skill deficits. If I want to assess those skills, I need many items per skill. If it is a cumulative test, I have to use some of the items to measure the skills way back in the first nine weeks. So by having it discretely measure the skills each nine weeks, I can have more items per skill that I’m trying to assess.

Cumulative: well, I’ve made my case, I think, for the first three nine weeks, but the fourth nine weeks test, and I would give one the fourth nine weeks, I think should come after the SOL test. The value of the fourth nine weeks test, especially if it is cumulative, is it can be used to assess skill deficits for children who may need summer school or an intervention during the summer; because many times you don’t get your SOL tests back before the summer school is being planned.

Another point I’d like to make is that tests need to be closely aligned to the Blueprint. For instance, if you know your Blueprints, sometimes the one reporting category could be 70% of the test, another reporting category might be 36% of the test in Patterns, Functions, and Algebra, while only 16 or 14% in computation. You want a nine weeks test that matches that level of emphasis as indicated by the Blueprint.

And finally your nine weeks tests need to measure (the) same level of thinking as expected in the Standards. Many times teachers’ classroom tests don’t ask questions at the same level of thinking or same level of complexity or in the same format as the SOL test. You need to use the Performance by Question, the Blueprints, and the released test items all as guides in designing your test questions to be sure that they’re aligned to the DOE resources.