DOCUMENT LIBRARY
Self-Scoring Guide for Assessment and Accountability
Adapted from Taking Center Stage, Sacramento: California Department of Education,
2001, p. 98
Assessment and Accountability: The school, district, and community regularly review student progress toward accomplishing the expected schoolwide learning results. This assessment process is integrated into the teaching/learning process and encourages students and teachers to make connections between what they are teaching and learning and achievement of the expected schoolwide learning results. Assessment results are the basis for reevaluation and redesign of the curriculum, instructional practices, and students’ personal learning plans.
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| The school staff members regard assessment as integral to the educational process. The district and school establish levels of accomplishment for the expected schoolwide learning results and create a system to continually assess student process through a comprehensive assessment program that emphasizes student knowledge, performance, and depth of understanding. All staff members participate in the continual evaluation system and feedback loop linked to authentic assessment of expected schoolwide learning results. |
The school regards assessment as providing important feedback information and has regular formal assessment procedures in place that focus on systematic improvement in student performance relative to established norms or benchmarks. Many teachers make efforts to embed performance assessment tasks into instruction in order to assess students’ learning processes and ability to use knowledge, critical thinking skills, and communication skills |
Data about student achievement are collected sporadically and unevenly, often in response to external demands. Although these data are viewed as a means for improving instruction and documenting successful strategies or weaknesses in the program, there is a lack of expertise in assessment and an absence of a systematic process that makes improvement or meaningful change difficult. Thus, little real attention is paid to preventing student failure, and few changes in classroom instruction result from the assessment process. |
Data about student achievement are collected as needed and generally on an individual basis. The school’s instructional strategies are uniform and unchanging. Students’ backgrounds (e.g., private or deprivation) are viewed as reasons for poor performance, over-riding school factors. |
| School professionals routinely gather formal and informal data on student achievement and products. School teams analyze these data to evaluate student performance and identify appropriate strategies for instruction and assessment. Teachers and administrators use these data both to inform instruction and as the subject for discussions and collegial feedback (including feedback from students). Teachers incorporate assessment tasks into instruction to stimulate thinking, including students’ ability to analyze, organize, interpret, explain, synthesize, evaluate, and communicate important ideas. |
Teachers periodically analyze student achievement data and documented improvements in student morale, attendance, to evaluate student performance levels and reflect on the effectiveness of instruction as well as to determine grades and plan subsequent instruction. Teachers modify curriculum and instruction as a result of these analysis. |
Assessment of student performance is based on tasks designed to measure what students have learned and, in some classes, how well they can communicate their knowledge to others. These assessments are used by teachers to give students feedback and determine grades. Staff members have a superficial understanding of what should be involved in meaningful performance-based accountability and assessment. |
Assessment of student performance is viewed as separate from instruction, usually taking the form of end-of-unit or end-of-semester tests that measure what students have learned. These assessments are used to judge student performance and determine grades.
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| Students learn to use self- and external assessments to sustain achievement and excellence and to evaluate and modify personal learning plans. |
Teachers encourage students to consider their assessment results in relation to their personal learning plans. |
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