Assessment
The purpose of assessment in the Council Rock School District is to:
• Support instruction and student learning
• Provide measurement outcomes of learning through grading and reporting
• Support program and curriculum evaluation
• Monitor trends and evaluate equity in instruction and resources
• Provide data for accountability
To accomplish this, the district uses multiple measures to develop a balanced assessment system. The District Assessment System aims to establish a common language for the understanding of learning measures, to identify assessments used in the school district, and to provide stakeholders with an understanding of the how the data is collected, analyzed, and used to improve student learning and evaluate curriculum and programs.
The Language of Assessment
The Council Rock School District has a balanced assessment system based two major categories:
Formative: Assessments for learning
Summative: Assessments of learning
Formative Assessments are administered to monitor and provide feedback on students’ learning before and during instruction. This data helps teachers to plan, adjust, and improve their instructional strategies. The goal is to identify areas of need and to correct deficiencies in real time to lead to improved performance and mastery.
❖ Universal Screeners: determine basic skill information. They are short assessments that identify students at risk for academic difficulties or in need of enrichment. Examples of a universal screeners used by the school district are the Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy (DIBELS) in English Language Arts and Acadience in Mathematics. The assessment is administered to all students in grades K-6 at the beginning of the school year, middle of the school year, and end of the school year. The data from this assessment helps the teacher to plan instructional grouping and to plan targeted instructional strategies for all students to develop specific reading and math skills. The data is also used to identify individual students who may need supplementary support in learning reading and math skills.
❖ Diagnostic assessments: an assessment that is typically given to those students identified as at-risk on a screening assessment to provide specific information to teachers about the student’s strengths and weaknesses. Intervention is based on the student’s identified learning deficit to create a starting point for targeted instruction. An example of a diagnostic assessment in reading would be a spelling inventory.
❖ Progress Monitoring: brief assessments that keep the teacher informed about a student’s progress during the school year. It provides non-graded assessments to inform teacher’s instructional and intervention practices. Within intervention, progress monitoring tracks progress toward individualized student goals and changes to be made in instruction to meet the needs of the student.
❖ Benchmark assessment: measures student performance against a standard set of learning and is used to assess progress towards end of year goals and to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses, which can then inform their future instruction.
❖ Aptitude test: designed to assess what a student is capable of doing or to predict what a student is able to learn or do, given the right education and instruction. The goal of an aptitude test is to predict the ability to learn new skills. It represents a student's level of competency to perform a certain type of task. Examples of aptitude assessments are the PSAT, SAT, and ASVAB assessments.
Summative assessments are used to measure and certify student learning outcomes at the end of a unit or course. These assessments help teachers to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of instruction and for students to see the degree to which they have learned and mastered the content standards and skills identified as expectations.
❖ Locally, summative assessments are unit tests and final exams that are used to distinguish student performance towards mastery of the standards (content and skills). These are used toward determining student grades for courses.
❖ At the State level, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) and the Keystone Exams provide data to the level of proficiency in attaining the course standards. Performance measures on the Keystone Exams may be used towards meeting graduation requirements in the Keystone Pathways to Graduation.
❖ Nationally, the Advanced Placement (AP) Exams are used for college entrance and placement by providing a consistent measure for all students across the country and world. They are voluntary assessments and may require registration and payment by the student independent of the school district