Taking Center Stage – Act II (TCSII)

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Developing Local Benchmark Assessments

Adapted from Taking Center Stage (2001), pp. 29, 30

Through the collaborative process, content area teachers and the principal do the following:

1. Select the standards they want to assess (not too many at one time or the assessment becomes too long, unfocused, and difficult to evaluate).
   
   
2. Determine what evidence they need to collect from students that will demonstrate whether the students are gaining or have gained the necessary proficiency in the content standards.
   
   
3. Develop a question, prompt, or task that they think will elicit the evidence. (Assessment items usually go through a series of refinements based on actual student responses before they are perfected.) (See Chapter 3.)
   
   
4. Agree upon the way the assessment will be administered so that all students have equal access to time and resources (exclusive of students who require documented special accommodations).
   
   
5. Develop an initial scoring guide (rubric-criteria) based on what is expected. Typically, scoring guides are based on four levels, five levels, or six levels, depending on the level of specific feedback desired for teachers and students (see Appendix 3-A for a four-point scoring guide for grade-seven writing).
   
   
6. Decide on a cut score that separates score points. (There is a cut score for each level, but the critical ones are those between the levels that will trigger targeted-accelerated assistance to those students just below proficiency (basic) and immediate interventions for those students who are below basic performance levels.)
   
   
7. Administer the assessment/assignment and reconvene with the student work to be evaluated. Read several papers, and based on initial scoring criteria, sort them into score-point categories.
   
   
8. Discuss student work samples.
   1. Were expected responses received?
   2. Do the scoring criteria need to be simplified, expanded, or refined to take into account that which was not expected?
      
      
9. Agree and defend why each of the student “exemplars” fits the finalized scoring criteria and score point received. (This “like mindedness” is referred to as calibration and gives a teacher the confidence to score anonymous papers with the same expertise and objectivity as colleague teachers across the district.)

These initial steps outline the time-intensive collaborative process teachers and principals go through to develop assessment assignments, scoring guides, exemplars, and cut points for a first-time performance task. The teachers score all papers, using the scoring guide and exemplars, also called anchor papers, as their references. The first time scoring a new assessment is always the most difficult and most time intensive. After the work is scored and recorded, the data can be used to inform subsequent instruction and make important decisions about interventions and resources.

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