Establishing a Vision for Formative Assessment Practices
Thanks to the support I’ve received from various members of my learning community (particularly Julie Kopp, Theresa Gray, and Jennifer Borgioli), I’ve discovered much more about the power of formative assessment practices in recent years. Reflecting on questions like

How Would You Teach to This Test? Part II
Compare and Contrast Constructed Response: How do your current assessment practices align to the vision you began to articulate here?

How Would You Teach to This Test?
Multiple Choice: If you were a parent approaching a conversation with your child’s teacher, which discussion would be most informative to you? A. A discussion prompted by the results of an assessment recently given by your district or your state OR B. A discussion prompted by the teacher’s assessment of your child’s gifts and needs as a learner, shaped by evidence captured during instruction and practice Constructed Response: Please share your vision of what powerful, informative assessment accomplishes for stu

When Formative Assessment Works: Lessons Learned
In recent months, I’ve been growing more and more concerned about the ways in which folks tend to confuse the words testing and assessment. I also have some substantial concerns about what people are calling rubrics these days and the purposes for using them–but I’ll save that for another post. For the next week or so, I’ll be trying to articulate where I am in the progress of my own learning around the topic of assessment, and what is troubling me about all of that. There are some important take aways. Some of these realizations have changed my own practice substantially. Others are teaching me much about what it takes to influence the right kind of change in the

Writing While Waiting…
…for my kids to get home from school …for the laundry load to finish spinning out …for the teachers that I am working with to return from their lunch break …for the next episode of my favorite television program to begin …for my materials to finish printing …for the next item to appear on my never-ending “to do” list This is what I’ve learned as a participant in National Novel Writing Month this year: if I wait for an uninterrupted block of time to present itself, I will never begin (let alone finish) a single piece of writing. A number of people who have