Effective Use of Interim Assessments

In this Kappan column, Newark school leader Paul Bambrick-Santoyo poses the following scenario: two teachers seem equally skilled in the classroom (as judged by administrator observations), but the students in the first class get far better test results than students in the second. Bambrick-Santoyo’s explanation: the first teacher is constantly analyzing assessment results and adjusting teaching accordingly – specifically:

• He directs his questions to the student who most needs to work on that skill.
• In-class quizzes spiral the content students most need to review.
• He is constantly making subtle adjustments to practices based on assessment results.

In this classroom, teaching that superficially appears comparable to that of the second teacher has far more impact on student learning.

Bambrick-Santoyo contrasts this use of during-the-year assessments with the way some schools use end-of-year test results to reward and punish teachers. The latter approach is “a deeply imperfect solution,” he says, “and one that does nothing to help this year’s students. This system rewards past performance rather than builds better future performance. By contrast, the best instructional leaders see assessments as resources to drive in-the-moment teacher improvement.” 

Bambrick-Santoyo describes a meeting between a middle-school principal in Newark, NJ and a math teacher as they analyze the results of an interim assessment. The principal praises the teacher on the overall results and then focuses on question 17, a fractions problem that most students got wrong. The teacher, based on his analysis of the results before the meeting, says students made basic computational errors multiplying fractions in the word problem and didn’t catch them because they didn’t know value estimation – how to look at an answer and realize that it’s not in the ballpark. 

The principal wants more specifics. “What are the questions students need to ask themselves to make value estimation a habit?” he asks. The teacher explains that students need to be able to round fractions and mixed numbers, estimate the answer, solve the problem, and then ask themselves if the answer makes sense. “What you want them to do is right,” says the principal. “So now what I want to think about are the concrete action steps we can take to build that metacognition in them. How can we take this opportunity to do that? What would you want the lesson to look like – the modeling, the handouts – so students do this all the time?” They proceeded to design a mini-lesson and handout, plan how the teacher would model the strategy for students and coach them as they used it, and decide when the lesson would be taught. 

Bambrick-Santoyo concludes with the key elements that make interim assessments optimally effective:

• Frequency – Giving high-quality interim assessments four times a year (roughly every 6-8 weeks);

• Reassessing previously learned skills – “Doing so ensures that the insights gathered from the data can serve not as autopsies but as checkups, allowing teachers to make corrections while there is still time,” he says.

• Close analysis – “The best analysis meetings don’t stop at the level of overall skills,” says Bambrick-Santoyo. “They drill down to specific errors.”

• Follow-up – Analysis meetings need to produce specific action plans, right down to mini-lessons and handouts and when the lessons will be taught. “Too often,” he says, “assessment meetings are filled with great ideas that never see the classroom… Without a systematic and relentless commitment to turn analysis into concrete, deliverable lessons, gathering data is meaningless.”

“Coaching – and Teaching – for Results” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Phi Delta Kappan, February 2013 (Vol. 94, #5, p. 70-71), www.kappanmagazine.org

From the MarshallMemo #472