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Using Improvement Science to Support School-wide Formative and Summative Assessment Alignment to Improve Student Learning Outcomes

Rory Dippold, MYP Coordinator

Jaime Osborne, Individual & Societies Teacher

May 26, 2022

Recording on

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Introductions

In the chat, please type your name, school(s), years with IB and a success and/or challenge with assessment practices at your school.

*We will discuss these successes and challenges in the breakout rooms.

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Today’s Agenda

  • Introductions & review session outcomes
  • Explanation of connection to IB, context for change, and the process completed
  • Share successes & challenges
  • Discussion on guiding questions
  • Questions and answers

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Session Outcomes

  • I can understand and can apply improvement science approach to improve a school-wide IB goal (i.e. alignment of formative and summative assessments).

  • I can explain how one school approached the development of aligned formative and summative assessments to increase student ownership of learning.

  • I can apply key takeaways around assessment task design and use of improvement science in my own school setting.

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Session’s Connection to IB Mission Statement

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

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Programme standards (2020)

Students and teachers use feedback to improve learning, teaching and assessment (Learning Standard, Approaches to assessment, 1).

Teachers use a variety of assessment methods that are connected to stated learning objectives and outcomes (Learning Standard, Approaches to assessment, 2.1).

The school implements and reviews processes that actively engage students in their own learning (Learning Standard, Lifelong learners 1.2).

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Context

Middle school and 9th grade are standards-based learning and grading ONLY

  • Quarter scores are 1-8 for each criteria
      • Converted to a letter grade (A-F) at end of year
  • Three grading categories include practice, formative, and summative
      • Summative assessment counts for 100% of student’s grade

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Definitions

Standards-Based Grading & Learning:

  • System of grading aligned to IB criteria using task-specific rubrics
  • Designed to provide targeted feedback to students as a means to increase student ownership of the learning process

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Definitions

Summative: Assessment of Learning

  • Authentic Performance-Based
  • Incorporates student voice and choice
  • Traditional tests (multiple choice, essay and free response)

Formative: Assessment for Learning

  • Task aligned to the summative
  • Designed to provide timely, actionable, and relevant feedback to students

Practice:

Assessment for Learning

  • Not aligned to the summative
  • Designed to provide data about student performance in relation to SOLs
  • It could be homework or classwork (not graded).

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Context: Problems to Address

  • Inconsistent practices around designing high-quality formative and summative assessments
  • Limited scaffolding to set students up for success on the summative

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IB School Goal / Programme Development Plan (PDP)

The PDP focused on teachers engaging in the inquiry cycle focused on formative and summative assessments. This goal was based on teacher discussions, researching best practices and aligning our practices to IB.

Objective: Using the inquiry cycle, teachers will improve teaching and student learning by revising at least one unit with a focus on formative and summative assessments by June 2021 and four units total by June 2022.

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IB School Goal / Programme Development Plan (PDP)

Inquiry is focused on teacher planning and starting with backwards design (beginning with the end in mind). This includes using a summative assessment checklist and task specific rubrics.

  • Step 1: Identify a unit that you have a formal formative and summative assessment created. It could be a unit already taught or will be teaching.
  • Step 2: As a collaborative team or as a singleton teacher, please complete the summative checklist.

Action is focused on what teachers and students will be doing to support ongoing learning. This includes using a formative assessment checklist and focus on formative feedback.

  • Step 3: As a collaborative team or as a singleton teacher, please complete the formative checklist.

Reflection is focused on the impact the inquiry and action has on student learning and teacher improvements.

  • Step 4: Please complete the appropriate reflection (before, during or after) section in the MYP unit planner.
  • Reflection questions: What did you learn from engaging in this inquiry cycle focused on assessment practices? What adjustments have you made or will make on the formative and summative assessment.

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Improvement Science

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Improvement Science Process

Step 1

Collect and collaboratively analyze data to identify PoP

Step 2

Tease out reasons for the PoP = tedious process for teachers to create high-quality assessments

Step 3

Research best practice = use of checklists

Step 4

Discuss theory of change starting with change idea and working backwards to goal

Step 5

Implement test (i.e. Checklist Version 1) with select group of teachers and collect data

Step 6

Collaboratively analyze data to see if change is an improvement

Step 7

Use data to inform next test cycle (i.e. Checklist Version 2)

Step 8

Cycle repeats….

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Checklist

3 Focus Areas:

  • Design
  • Communication
  • Student Involvement

Summative Assessment Quality Checklist

Formative Assessment Quality Checklist

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Example of Modified Assessment

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IB MYP Unit Planner

Civilizations

Systems

Orientation in Time and Space

Despite time and space, the four river valley civilizations share common systems or patterns

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Before Checklist vs. After Checklist

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Results

Summative Assessment:

  • More authenticity
  • More student voice & choice
  • More consideration of backwards design

Formative Assessment

  • Better ability of teachers to use feedback to improve student learning
  • Increased student engagement in own learning

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Celebrations

  • Evaluation MYP comment “The intense focus on the development of authentic, aligned formative and summative assessments over the last few years has led to increased rigor and greater clarity for students in regard to achieving learning outcomes.”
  • Development, alignment and scaffolding of skills on formative assessments to support success on summative assessments
  • Use of task specific rubrics to promote and support rigorous assessments (e.g. higher level thinking, clear standards)
  • Increase use of authentic performance based (real-world) assessments
  • Increase ability for students to articulate their learning and understanding through assessment design that is approached in the same way.

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Evidence of Impact

1. Teacher reflections and feedback

“The formative and summative checklist allowed my department to thoroughly reflect on our current assessment practices and provided us with a roadmap to make improvements and adjustments for the future.”

“It has been very useful to go through the formative and summative checklists and reflect. We have been able to see where we are strong such as in aligning formatives to summatives and building task specific indicators and see where we need to improve such as giving students opportunities to put the criteria in their own words.”

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Evidence of Impact

2. Student data - Pre-and-post data

  • All department data increased 5 - 10% on the questions below from December 2020 to December 2021.

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Evidence of Impact

3. Teacher checklists were mainly 2s and 3s with feedback on the checklist put in the unit planners.

Formative checklist example

Summative checklist example

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Challenges

  • Developing organization to support desired practices
    • How do we provide time and space to collaborate?
  • Authenticity
    • What does real-world mean across subjects?
  • Provision of timely, actionable, and relevant feedback to students
    • What school-wide reporting policies are needed to norm this behavior?

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Personal Reflection & Guiding Questions

  1. What does formative and summative assessment look like at your school?

  • What tool(s) do teachers use at your school to help them design “high quality” summative tasks?

  • How does your school use assessment to actively engage students in their own learning?

4. Our school context (i.e. summatives count for 100%) demanded that we improve the alignment between formative and summative tasks. How might your specific school context inform your goal(s) for assessment?

5. If not assessment, what is an IB goal at your school that you might utilize improvement science?

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Small Group Discussion (Approximately 10 mins)

Group 1 - Stay with Rory in this Zoom

This Zoom link (original) -

https://zoom.us/j/95893532284?pwd=U04wTXdycll1VCtwV0NpUTdRMFdRQT09

Meeting ID: 958 9353 2284

Passcode: pTF7TT

Group 2 - Go to this Link with Jaime

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71484571380?pwd=oQzQndT6S4HKEgZDPau8KNCTc3i9G7.1

Meeting ID: 714 8457 1380

Passcode: IBMYP

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Small Group Discussion (Approximately 10 mins)

Group 1:

Patricia

David

Jennifer

Deborah

Samantha

Lizbeth

Kimberly

Suhair

Group 2:

Kristin

Alina

Kirsten

Kristin

Valerie

Tiyonna

Kip

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Session Outcomes

  • I can understand and can apply improvement science approach to improve a school-wide IB goal (i.e. alignment of formative and summative assessments).

  • I can explain how one school approached the development of aligned formative and summative assessments to increase student ownership of learning.

  • I can apply key takeaways around assessment task design and use of improvement science in my own school setting.

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Questions?

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References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America's schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.

Schimmer, T., Hillman, G., & Stalets, M. (2018). Standards-based learning in action: Moving from theory to practice. Solution Tree Press.

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