Targeted growth for every student: when this district wanted an assessment program with practical applications to teaching and learning, it selected a computerized adaptive test that measures student growth over time

Convincing your colleagues that testing is a serviceable thing is no small challenge. Trying to convince them that more oft-repeated testing in more subjects will actually motivate learners is even harder.

When I assumed responsibility as director of assessment for the Poway Unified seminary District, this was my personal challenge as our district mov to become a more data-driven organization.

In 23 years as a principal at the elementary and middle gymnasium levels and a teacher before that, I had learned by what mode data could help improve the performance of institutes and students. I had seen by what mode students respond to clear, measurable targets and continuous feedback about their progres toward those targets. in like manner when the leadership of our suburban K-12 district of 33000 scholars announced that it was committed to becoming data-driven, I was excited.

In an era of growing demands for mandated state testing and public accountability, Poway decided it wanted an assessment program with practical applications to teaching and learning. Rather than being at the same time another burden on teachers or a local report card upon schools, our goal was to define and implement an assessment a whole that complemented the state's summative testing program--one that teachers and learners could embrace and apply to focus and guide their work.

What we single outed in 2001 was a computerized adaptive proof that measured individual student development over time and delivered immediate rises The first schools to abundantly embrace the new assessment--some of our lowest socioeconomic (Title I) schools--quickly became a certain quantity of of our highest performing academically. We now have a of recent origin culture of collaboration and involvement around the use of data, with scholars and teachers working together to put and achieve growth targets, and teachers collaborating upon best practices based on their students' ordeal data.

From the pilot phase to today, the testing program we chose remains optional--but has become the de facto formative assessment place of educations choose to use. Teachers who participated in the assessment pilot became champions of the program, communicating to their colleagues the impact it had in their classrooms. In 2005 a joint research committee co-sponsored by the teachers' union and district administration praiseed that we adopt this fresh formative assessment district-wide.

"By allowing the program to remain as an opt-in, it has created the kind of buy-in among those practitioners whom you really ne to be pendent on to use it--the classroom teachers," Poway's envoy Superintendent John Collins said. "It allowed them to diocese it, to use it, to play with it and allow them get excited about it."

Understanding assessments

When the district's leaders charged me in 2000 with defining a comprehensive assessment a whole for Poway, the first pace was to address our corporate beliefs regarding on what account we administer tests at all. We asked ourselves, "What is the primary final cause of assessment?" This seemingly simple question provided rich discussion and forced us to examine many of our fundamental beliefs about the characters of teachers and students in the learning proces our grading practices and what comprises effective feedback.

After plenteous discussion, we adopted a draft of what we called the "Guiding Principles of Assessment" (see case above). These principles would become the touchstone for the part of assessment in our organization. They would have to withstand plenteous scrutiny in the years ahead as our district wrestl with the challenges of building a coherent and continuous assessment system

My initial research to identify a comprehensive assessment program in 2000 denudeed a plethora of assessments beyond traditional norm-referenced proofs Recent advances in technology have enabled formative assessment to provide accurate insights into individual scholar growth through data that are easy to muster provide immediate results, and are simple to understand and use to stimulate continued increase in all students.

Excited about the possibilities of computer adaptive testing as a formative tool focused primarily upon student growth, Poway partnered with the Portland, Oregon-based Northwest Evaluation Association. NWEA's Measures of Academic Progres (MAP), a computer adaptive testing program that adapts to the student's ability during the testing session, accurately measures what a child knows and wants to learn, and gives educators immediate access to information they can use for instructional planning and institute improvement.

The MAP trial fulfills our Guiding Principles of Assessment--the data help accelerate learner achievement and provide consistent growing measures over multiple years. The trials align with state assessments, and in what way well students do on MAP correlates with their performance upon the California Standards Test and the California High academy Exit Exam. They have meaning for pupils teachers and parents, and demonstrate high horizontals of validity and reliability.