Planning for Student Success
I have been using an article by McTighe and O'Connor on Seven Practices for Assessment with teachers of middle grade students. The article is fantastic and comes from Educational Leadership. The eye-opener for me is to find out how many teachers are not designing Summative Assessments before they begin a unit of instruction. Summative Assessments that are authentic, require analysis, synthesis and evaluation thinking. This revelation is making me wonder about teacher preparation and what we expect as principals.
One strategy I am advocating for all principals is to ask for the summative assessment before a teacher starts the unit of instruction and to determine if the summative assessment meets the criteria for national standards, state standards and higher order thinking. After reviewing many Summative assessments the principal may decide what strategy to take for professional development on assessments.
