Standards and Their Assessment
By Audrey Conant, MEMA chair, Information Skills
With Dot Grazier and Nancy Grant

Put them all together and you have the noun, 'standard:' "that against which worth is measured." Think foundation, and it means a consistent, sound basis for evaluation. Think reaching for a star, and it means the height of expectation. Sometimes the meaning is confused with the adjective 'standard' or 'standardized,' denoting normal or typical. In the education world this can spell 'mediocrity'. The best preventive or solution for such slippage is the establishment of written educational standards, clearly defined and illustrated, and measured in ways that are precise, understandable, and helpful.

Issues surrounding the establishment and measurement of educational standards have been front and center for years. Subject-area standards have been developed by national agencies and organizations and institutions, some of them differing within the same subject regarding content or procedure. The revised Information Power contains the American Library AssociationÍs national information literacy standards. Fifty states have developed education standards, often derived from the national subject area standards. In some instances, they are being used to reward or punish teachers, schools, districts in relation to student measurements against these standards. The rationale is to emphasize educator (and administrative) accountability.

Maine's legislature mandated state educational standards in June, 1996. The implementation and funding will take place over a period of years. MEMA published The Information Skills Guide for Maine Educators, still in print, which includes suggested developmental information literacy standards. See access information in Appendix A for current national, Maine, and MEMA tandards. Many local Maine districts and schools have been working on in-house standards for years before the state mandate. The chapter A YARMOUTH INFORMATION LITERACY PROGRAM is devoted to the ongoing development of information literacy standards within the Yarmouth school district, under the auspices and instigation of its professional librarians.

Maine's Learning Results, further described at the end of this chapter, will be measured by an array of assessments, both state and local. Each school district will design instruction, professional development, and measurement tools over a period of years within a framework of 'learning results', loosely defined as 'what the learner is able to do with what she knows.'

Education based on learning results joins curriculum, teaching methods, and teacher and student roles inextricably with measurement and evaluation. The challenge of adapting methods of traditional testing to this sweeping reform has been added to an ongoing scrutiny of these methods. The biggest problem in traditional testing has been deliberate simplification in order to maximize reliability and minimize ambiguity. Alternative (non-standardized) methods of measurement are supplementing and in some cases superceding traditional systems. Their biggest problem is the obverse: flexible application defies standardization. Both forms have potential strengths and weaknesses; most educators are looking hard at both in an effort to develop the most helpful measurement tools in the context of current education. They are incorporating as many of the following elements as possible into those tools.

COMPONENTS OF 'HELPFUL' MEASUREMENT

* Assessments are valid: they reflect outcome priorities in broad terms as well as in an explicit manner. If teachers and students are to be held accountable, tests must measure what is being taught and learned.
* Students understand the standards, criteria, and rubrics guiding and measuring their current curriculum as well as their exit requirements.
* Assessments are consistent and imply high expectations.
* Continuum assessment, which incorporates pre-existing capability, is used to allow for measurement of growth, or 'value-added' capability.
* Tools are developed that illuminate causes of good or poor performance, and that provide usable feedback with minimal analysis.
* Specifics eliminate the possibility of grade inflation.
* Quality work is defined as a requirement, not an option, within the bounds of developmental levels. There is clear differentiation between difficulty of task and quality of results.
* Behavior indicating self-directed learning is expected, assessed, and reported (this adds a necessary assumption of importance).
* Current and anticipated work-related behaviors and attitudes are assessed and reported.
* Precludes teaching to the assessment vs teaching to the standards - separating educator-as-evaluator and educator-as-coach.
* Local reliability is achieved through collaboration and training, resulting in minimum variation among graders of similar work.
* There is a credible relationship between local and external performance results.
* Assessment tool works FOR learning, not as punishment for NOT learning. It is a tool of learning, not a weapon of control; assessment can be a learning experience in itself.
[ I remember the bottomless horror when I realized one of my biology teachers was testing verbatim the footnotes on the bottom of the textbook pages. This happened the same semester that I was thrilled to see in my history exam that credit was given for applying what I had learned in my way and on my terms. ]

"You can't test performance unless you teach performance."
Ron Brandt in "Overview." Educational Leadership.
Vol 52 #2 p3, October 1994.

This history task, adapted from one by Dennie Wolfe of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is an example of a test that is a learning experience. Note that subject content and information literacy are blended, while criteria spell out discrete abilities.

RECONSTRUCTION 101 AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Your packet contains a facsimile collection of letters written by freed slaves and people controlling Reconstruction. Study the letters, make notes on them, and design a museum exhibition centered about those letters. The aim is to provide visitors an opportunity to understand the complexity of the post-Civil War South.

1. Turn in working notes and commentaries on the letters, showing what you noticed.

2. Write a paragraph on the chief idea to be put across in your exhibit.

3. Create cards with titles and explanations fo each item in the exhibition.

4. Suggest other artifacts for the exhibit (with photocopies if exam is a take-home).

5. Provide a set of annotated URLs for visitors to explore, with directions for their incorporation into the exhibit. (Assume availability of 3 Internet sites.

CRITERIA FOR GRADING
:
  • Ability to work from original documents.

  • Embedded accuracy: Comments on the facts cited or implied.

  • Development of a historical idea.

  • Ability to break out of stereotypes.

  • Selection of apt, associative materials.

Reporting techniques are being improved as are measurement tools. Following are some of the objectives of better communication of evaluation.

Components of 'Helpful' Reporting:
Grading is a result of evaluations over a period of time and constitutes a description of those results in some format. (Assessments, in contrast, have been diagnostic checks at points in time, complete with decisions reached by the student and teacher. As assessments measure more and more 'process,' they will take place over a longer time period.)
There is a clear delineation between reporting of 'progress' (individual growth beyond past measurement), and distance still to go to reach grade or exit standard.
Students and parents understand the evaluations and feel they are fair; reports are accompanied not only by student work but by models of standards. (Completed assessment tools are available during conferences.)
Reports have feedback sections for parents and student; both deliverer and receiver of grades are satisfied that communication goals were achieved.
Reporting techniques minimize competition and turn attention to learning.

First Steps for Reporting

Report only when you are comfortable using a variety of alternative assessments and tools.

Choose an area that existing traditional tests do not cover and would be hard put to cover; this will result in extended and balanced reporting, not conflicting or competitive reporting.

Choose an area that is valued, not peripheral, and that is easily visible. For example: successfully exploring and using a wide variety of sources.

Choose an area that has not been assessed in the past, but that has become a valued component of current education. One area of increasing concern and attention in curriculum is behavior. Collaboration can be broken down into controlling self in a group, working with the group to reach a goal, communicating well with others, and showing others respect. Some elements of researcher-like behavior that lend themselves to innovative assessment:

- initiative
- persistence
- ability to plan and follow through with that plan
- levels of research independence (in what areas does student rely upon others? in what areas does student offer peer guidance?) See Assessment of Independent Research Behavior in the OBSERVATION chapter.
This Chapter Continues... Part II (Innovative Assessment, Criteria, Rubrics and Lemna Project.
August 1997
Maine Educational Media Association

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