ASSESSMENT STANDARDS

ENSURING CONSISTENCY AND COHERENCE

Quality assessment connects curriculum, instruction, and assessment and shows consistency among purpose, process, and reporting.

Quality assessment is designed to ensure consistency across assessment, instruction, and curriculum. It provides insight into the learning of important mathematics and science in the classroom. Quality assessment provides consistency among purpose, process, and reporting. The kinds of assessments used, the interpretation of student work based on criteria, and reporting about learning are consistent with the learning outcomes defined in the curriculum. The teaching directly supports students' development of those outcomes.

Quality assessment shows coherence and consistency by:

• employing assessment designs that match the purposes of the assessment, the curriculum, and the instruction so that they form a coherent whole,
• utilizing a collection of assessment instruments, tasks and criteria that are designed to accomplish the purposes,
• establishing and making judgments based on criteria that identify the key qualities of a successful performance,
• using forms of reporting that are related to the purpose of the assessment and that give valid, useful and clear information about student learning.

A process that connects content standards, instructional practices, and assessment tools is useful in providing coherence and consistency. This process provides a basis for the selection/development of appropriate and diverse assessments that match educational purposes and uses. The process also provides teachers with a perspective that allows them to design classroom instruction that meets the intended learning outcomes and prepares students for the assessment.

Quality judgment of student performance on mathematics/science tasks is based on criteria that are directly related to the key qualities of a successful performance. These criteria are the basis for communicating about learning with students and others. A relatively fixed set of criteria for tasks aimed at the same big ideas and capabilities helps students understand the assessment process, improve their work, and increase opportunities for success.

Matching process to purpose and relating these to reporting is a critical part of assessment. For example, when the purpose is to provide a coherent and valid profile of student growth in mathematical and scientific literacy, assessment evidence from performance tasks, student projects, interviews and open-ended questions, investigations, and exhibitions can be used in addition to traditional paper and pencil tests. The assessment process includes interpreting, organizing, and communicating information. Quality reporting is consistent with the purposes of the assessment and makes valid inferences that are consistent with the assessment instruments used and, where possible, informed by the framework on which the curriculum and the instruction is based. The traditional report card is insufficient to communicate coherently about the complex outcomes that represent mathematical and scientific literacy. Reporting about students' growth literacy creates a coherent portrait of learning through narratives, student-led parent conferences, parent examination of actual samples of student work, student self-assessment and goal setting, and the use of continua that describe common characteristics of developing literacy.