This post was written by 起点传媒member Chris Hass, a member of聽迟丑别听起点传媒Standing Committee on Literacy Assessment.
Several years ago, my principal called for a grade-level meeting to discuss the disparity between the ELA grades in our third-grade classrooms. In particular, he wanted to talk about the fact that my ELA scores were so much higher than my colleagues鈥欌�攁n indication that maybe I was going too easy on my kids. To begin, he passed out an agenda that included our average grades for the most recent quarter.
Class 1聽 聽 聽 82%
Class 2聽 聽 聽85%
Class 3聽 聽 聽84%
Class 4聽 聽 聽82 %
My Class聽 聽91%
鈥淲hy do you suppose we see such a large difference between some of these classroom averages?鈥� he asked.
His tone and demeanor didn鈥檛 suggest he was calling me out. I sensed he genuinely wanted to understand. As principals ideally do, he had come to listen. My teammates studied the numbers on the sheet, then exchanged glances with one another. We were an incredibly tight, supportive group who respected one another a great deal, even if our views on teaching, learning, and assessment weren鈥檛 often aligned. After a prolonged silence, they looked uneasily over to me and waited.
鈥淲ell,鈥� I began, trying to choose my words carefully. 鈥淚 think we see a difference between scores because what I鈥檓 assessing鈥攁nd how I鈥檓 assessing it鈥攊s different in some ways from how others are generating their grades. I鈥檓 trying to assess all those things that are important in literacy development鈥攏ot just the ones that have traditionally been assessed. I鈥檝e been told so many times, 鈥榃e assess what we value.鈥� That鈥檚 what I鈥檓 striving to do now.鈥�
We Assess What We Value
Most literacy teachers will likely tell you they value the same things鈥攕upporting students to develop a love of reading and writing while scaffolding them to implement new skills, strategies, and understandings into their daily practices. But if we value these same things, why do our assessments look so different between classrooms, schools, and districts?
There are many reasons for this. Chief among these is the well-documented way high-stakes standardized testing has narrowed the curriculum and attempted to redefine what counts as growth, learning, and achievement in the literacy classroom. But as professionals we have choices about what and how we assess within our own classrooms. As such, we must carefully consider what skills, strategies, and daily practices should count as evidence of literacy growth and what data sources allow us to best assess this.
As I explained in our meeting that day, my literacy assessment practices varied from our school鈥檚 institutional norms in a couple ways. The first was that my students earned grades for reading and enjoying their books each day. If I was going to assess what I valued, I needed to make certain my students鈥� grades reflected the fact that they were growing into lifelong readers who independently sought out genres, authors, and titles they knew would fuel their reading lives. These texts not only delighted them but provided daily opportunities to put into practice what they were learning in the classroom.
Having students keep a very simple log of the books they were reading each day鈥攊n addition to the kidwatching notes I collected in the classroom when or during our one-on-one and small group 鈥攑rovided me vital information about their ability to:
- read on a daily basis
- stay focused on the text
- self-select high-interest books
- read from a variety of titles
- finish (most) books they began
- show interest in what they read
Ideally, this sort of data would be shared in narrative form detailing what the kids were already doing really well as readers and where we could support them to go next. I shared this with parents via emails, conversations, and short notes home. However, since my school demanded I also assign quantitative values to reading, I developed rubrics which allowed me to translate reading logs and kidwatching data into numerical scores.
The second way my literacy assessment practices varied from our school鈥檚 norms was the fact that very few of the scores in my gradebook were collected from a paper-and-pencil test. To truly know what my readers were doing to create meaning from the text, I knew I needed to diversify the ways I was assessing them. While a few isolated passages on a test might provide one form of data, I needed to be assessing these skills using a wide variety of data points if I truly wanted to capture what my readers knew and could do in actual practice. These included:
- reading conference
- student work samples from both and
- annotated or short texts
- kidwatching notes taken during
- between a teacher-student or student-student about a text
Again, the ideal vehicle for sharing this data would be to write a narrative report but given the expectations of my school I developed rubrics allowing me to translate these data points into numerical scores as well. While the resulting grades I submitted into the gradebook still didn鈥檛 tell families nearly enough about their children鈥檚 literacy development, at least those quantitative measures more accurately reflected everything my students demonstrated to me about their literacy growth as readers.
Ultimately, I was pleased with these efforts to navigate a healthy balance between my theoretical understanding of literacy assessment and the institutional mandates I could not change. By the end of our meeting, my principal not only accepted my rationale for these assessment practices鈥攈e fully supported them. In this case, everyone won鈥攎y kids, their families, and our school. And while not every administrator may be willing to place such trust in the professional knowledge of their teachers鈥攁 sad commentary on the current state of public education鈥攚e must keep fighting and doing what is best for our kids. The fate of sound literacy practices may well depend upon it.
Chris Hass is a second- and third-grade teacher at the Center for Inquiry in Columbia, South Carolina.
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