Monday, June 28, 2010
Benchmarks and success measurements
How do you measure student success in your school or classroom? Do you use benchmarks? If so, how often? Is it uniform across the school or district? Do you have specific procedures to help students who may be performing below par on a benchmark? If so, what are they? If not, do you have any suggestions for incorporating them? Sorry for the many questions, but I think this is an important topic in need of attention to detail.
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We have district-wide assessments and EVAAS to measure growth. That is better than just proficiency levels at the end when it is too late to help high school students (end of semester).
ReplyDeleteOur school district uses Study Island benchmarks three times per year (September, December, March) but I don't feel the results are accurate. My experience has been that middle school students don't take the benchmark tests seriously. I've had students who scored 4 on the previous year's EOG, score 1 on benchmark tests and end with 4 on this year's EOG.
ReplyDeleteWe also use EVAAS data, common formative assessments, and teacher recommendation to place students in remediation or enrichment for a 45-minute PLUS period each day. I personally hate the PLUS period because I believe that if teachers are doing in the classroom what they should be doing, what research says is proven best practice, and engaging students in interesting and relevant work, there would be no need for remediation.
How do I assess student knowledge? I engage students in conversation about what we read and about what we've studied. When they can verbalize to me what we've learned in a satisfactory way, I believe they've learned. If they can write it in a journal, I know they've learned.
Wow- 45 minutes? We have something called TITAN (Trask Intervention Tutoring and eNrichment) period for the same purpose, but it is only 20 minutes each day. It sounds like informal assessment works better for you than the formative EVAAS and benchmarks. Isn't is strange how that works? I usually employ similar activities like journals to routinely check understanding.
ReplyDeleteWe utilize district benchmarks as well as formative assessments w/ ClassScapes. We have built a remediation/enrichment period into our daily schedule to allow for individualized and small group instruction. We also provide inteventions through PSM.
ReplyDeleteWhat is PSM?
ReplyDelete