What is the Return On Time Invested (ROTI) for your assessments?
Excessive assessment has come under increased fire over the past couple of years and so this may be a 'little late to the party blog', but I've been verbally complaining about over assessing for years and the topic keeps coming up, so here's my two cents. My go to analogy has been one I stole from someone (too long ago to remember)...
"We need to stop weighing the pig and feed it!"
Let it sink in for a minute...
Weighing the pig=Assessing our kids
Feeding the pig=Teaching our kids
(Sorry to any vegetarians out there whom I may have offended...we can use a tomato for the next analogy.)
Let it sink in for a minute...
Weighing the pig=Assessing our kids
Feeding the pig=Teaching our kids
(Sorry to any vegetarians out there whom I may have offended...we can use a tomato for the next analogy.)
I will also say that this is not an anti-assessment or anti-SBAC/accountability blog. We need assessment and accountability in education (Blog for another time!) but what we don't need are assessments that are time consuming, underutilized, and that do not influence the instructional core. It goes back to what I have been writing about over the past couple of months on Return On Time Invested (ROTI). We only have so much time in education but we continue to mismanage that time with our energy going towards things that do not have an impact on learning. Assessment has been one of them...what I find interesting is this difference between what assessments we administer and what teachers and school teams actually value and use. It's not enough to just measure the time it takes to administer. You have to think about it's impact on classroom instruction and on teacher time outside of instruction.
Maybe it's that we're asking the wrong questions about assessments or asking the wrong people. Maybe we're not always paying attention to actually what is happening in the classroom with the information from assessments.
Here are the questions we should ask...
What does it assess?
How much instructional time is lost to administer the assessment?
How much time does it take to score and enter the data into your data system?
How valuable is the data to the teacher? How valuable is the data to the school?
How is it changing instruction?
What does it assess?
How much instructional time is lost to administer the assessment?
How much time does it take to score and enter the data into your data system?
How valuable is the data to the teacher? How valuable is the data to the school?
How is it changing instruction?
In actuality, the chief complaint that I hear about assessment is that there is so much data that the teachers don't know which data sets to analyze and then the amount of time they have to analyze the data is almost nil. It's not a surprise that so many teachers cringe when we mention data. They are sick of collecting it and entering it and not using it. Our PLC's work hard to look at data, let's continue to leverage the power of the 'PLC room' and maximize our time focusing on the most important sets of data!
Stop weighing the pig and feed it! We definitely know how much the pig weighs, what it's measurements are, what it's BMI is, etc...how many other measurements do we have to take to know what kind of food to feed it?
So, let's listen to the teachers and watch what the teachers do with assessments, data, and instruction. Let's ask better questions and seek answers from the right people. What are they using to plan their instruction? Let’s invest in teachers and their time. If they need coaching around assessment and data, let’s give it to them!
So, let's listen to the teachers and watch what the teachers do with assessments, data, and instruction. Let's ask better questions and seek answers from the right people. What are they using to plan their instruction? Let’s invest in teachers and their time. If they need coaching around assessment and data, let’s give it to them!