How Do You Define "Common" In Common Assessment? 10.18.2022

How do you interpret the “common” in common assessment? I am asking because this is an important conversation to have within a team who is developing and/or implementing a common assessment.  I have been thinking a lot about this lately because common assessment is an important tool for gathering evidence of student progress toward mastery within the context of a team or grade level. 

Without common assessments, it is more challenging, as a classroom teacher, to get a sense of where your group(s) of students fall within the context of the grade as a whole.  Working together to create a common assessment is a powerful professional learning opportunity.  Discussions around the knowledge/skills that will be included in the assessment leads to a shared understanding of what cognitive depth and complexity the team will be working toward when creating learning opportunities for students.  Having many voices at the table when texts and tasks are selected ensures that a wide range of students will be able to access the assessment, and have a common experience.  What is the necessary vocabulary that goes along with the knowledge/skills? Common assessments can build common vocabulary, both academic and content areas.  As a result, the common vocabulary is then reinforced in multiple classrooms. 

The hidden super power of a common assessment isn’t in the assessment at all.  It is the potential for identifying instructional strategies that are moving student learning forward. It is also working together to identify a common set of exemplar student work samples across the range of student mastery, and common rubrics that can be used to provide feedback to students, resulting in students monitoring their own growth toward their learning goals. 

This table is a starting point for reflecting on where your team is in their thinking about common assessments.  This is a work in progress and I hope it sparks conversations within your own teams. 

	Knowledge/Skills	Items/Tasks	Scoring	Feedback To Students
Tier 1	Everyone agrees on a small number of the essential knowledge/skills to be assessed.	In the order that students would have learned them in class.	Everyone scores their own.	Students get a score and can see what knowledge/skills they have mastered.
Tier 2	And everyone works together to identify what students look like/sound like when they are at mastery of the knowledge/skills	Clustered by related knowledge/skills. Distractors help to identify misconceptions on multiple choice tests.	Everyone scores their own then does an item analysis across the team to find strengths, gaps..	Students may be given the item analysis by cluster of knowledge/skills to see where they have strengths.
Tier 3	And everyone works together to identify what students look like at various points on their way toward mastery of the knowledge/skills including what accommodations may be necessary so all students can show their mastery.	Organized to provide evidence of progress toward mastery. Items/tasks written to provide evidence around Depth of Knowledge 1,2,3	Everyone scores their own then brings sets of exemplar responses - showing a range from basic to solid mastery to the group for discussion.  The team selects a set of exemplar responses from across all the students and uses these to create a rubric and as models for students.	Students can compare their work with the exemplar sets to see what they need to do next, teacher provides actionable feedback, based on the rubric, to help students see next steps.

Resources To Spark Your Thinking

• Instructional Practice Guide and support videos

• https://achievethecore.org/teachingthecore?&sort=date 

• Ten Tips for Writing Common Assessments - TeachingQuality.org

• Teacher’s Practical Guide To Formative Assessment - Commonsense.org

• Student Analysis Work Protocols - useful in creating exemplar sets

• WestEd Student Work Protocol template

• Video - Analyzing Student Work To Guide Instruction

Upcoming Opportunities

• The popular Student Achievement Partners course Improving Reading for Older Students is open for registration. You can join up until October 31st! Register as an individual for $20 (12 hours of seat time) or get a discount for teams of 4 or more.  This asynchronous course is perfect for teachers of Grades 4–12 in any content area interested in learning how to support reading with older students: https://achievethecore.org/page/3309/improving-reading-for-older-students?fbclid=IwAR3BldICFwYceKtdhRmHnilapw-R2N09016xuLJfhrgZM3zvDgA1wDiY10Y

• Registration is open through 10:00 AM on Oct 25 for the ODE Academic Conversations by Jeff Zweirs and Marie Crawford book study.  It will meet virtually monthly from 4:00-5:15 - you don’t need to join in every session.  If you do, you can complete 6.75 hours of professional learning. You must purchase your own book. https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=xPz4UNiUB0-E6zbtV8fIojITTj2glOxIq_SzZahgSFBUOVFON0Q1WlRIMlJYWjlESE1UVE1PVEg5Ni4u  

• Set up your own professional learning plan using the archived UDL Webinars from OCALI.  These are 17 thirty minute recorded webinars starting with UDL 101.  https://www.ocali.org/project/udl-webinars 

• EdReports is always looking for materials reviewers.  This is a good opportunity to work with a national education non-profit, and teams of educators from across the US.  There is a stipend for doing this work.  You can apply here https://www.edreports.org/process/reviewers,