Assessment without victims:

An Interview with Rick Stiggins

JSD: Teachers and principals are interested in showing that the new instructional practices being
used in their classrooms are improving student learning. But they’re often impatient about
waiting for next year's standardized test results to come back. How can improved formative
classroom assessment help in this situation?
Stiggins: Two things are important here. The first is that we must clearly articulate the
achievement targets we want students to hit. If there's knowledge to be mastered, what
knowledge? What are the reasoning proficiencies, performance skills, or product development
capabilities we want?
It's important that all teachers be confident, competent masters of the targets that their students
are shooting for. Unfortunately, however, as I travel the country I find teachers who are
responsible for teaching writing or reading, for example, but who don't have the slightest idea
what good writing looks like or what makes a good reader. That's because they haven't been
given the opportunity from a professional development point of view to master those
achievement targets themselves. It's not a pervasive problem, but it's big enough to mention in
this context. This mastery is the foundation for quality assessment. We cannot accurately assess
that which we don't understand.
The second thing is that teachers need to know how to transform these valued achievement
targets into quality, day-to-day classroom indicators of achievement. That's the foundation of
assessment literacy. Teachers who know how to do this can document student achievement day
to day in their classrooms and watch the progression of student learning. And, if someone asks,
they can provide compelling evidence of things their students can now do that they couldn't do
before.
Assessment literacy for teachers
JSD: How well prepared are teachers to use the skills you've just described?
Stiggins: Generally, they're not very well prepared. Only a handful of states require competency
in assessment as a condition of licensure. Even more troubling is that only three states require
competence in assessment for principal certification. The vast majority of practicing teachers and
administrators have not had the opportunity to develop the assessment literacy they need.
Because the typical teacher can spend a third to a half of his or her professional time in
assessment-related activities, teachers need inservice opportunities to learn assessment strategies.
From a staff development point of view, it's important that all teachers understand which
assessment methods to use in what situations. For example, while it's not trendy to talk in these
terms, multiple choice tests still have a contribution to make for certain achievement targets and
in certain contexts. Under other circumstances, essays or performance assessments might be the
best choice. The trick is to know which method to use when and how to use it well. That's
assessment literacy.
Fit the assessment to the goal
JSD: What are some examples of classroom-friendly ways that teachers can use to assess student
learning on an ongoing basis that would demonstrate to them and to others whether students are
learning more because new practices are being tried in their classrooms?
Stiggins: In the area of elementary reading, teachers can use techniques like running records in
which they keep track of students' fluency and comprehension. Oral retelling of stories by young
students can be used to check their understanding. Simply asking students one-on-one or through
a group process to talk about what they read can let us know if they comprehend it.
For writing, it's important that the curriculum be spelled out in terms of stages of writing
development. What it takes to be a competent emergent writer is different from what it takes to
be a competent intermediate writer or a high school writer. From a writing proficiency point of
view, the best of all assessment methods is to have kids write and to have others evaluate the
products they create. Analytic writing rubrics are useful here; there are a number of them around
the country that I think are really focused and powerful. At the Assessment Training Institute, we
believe it’s essential to share standards with students up front and teach them to evaluate their
own and each other's writing.
To assess reasoning, problem solving, and critical thinking, we need to define what specific
patterns of thinking we want students to demonstrate. This will play out differently, though, in
different academic disciplines. In science, for example, certain patterns of inferential reasoning
characterize the scientific method. Here teachers can pose specific science problems and ask
students to demonstrate that they can reason in a scientific way.
Students learn from assessments
JSD: A study in England found that many of the most successful instructional innovations used
student self-assessments and peer assessments to strengthen formative assessment in the
classroom. The study also found that improved formative assessment raised student achievement
overall but that it helped low achievers most.
Stiggins: I, too, have read that very important research. The key is to understand the relationship
between assessment and student motivation. In the past, we built assessment systems to help us
dole out rewards and punishment. And while that can work sometimes, it causes a lot of students
to see themselves as failures. If that goes on long enough, they lose confidence and stop trying.
When students are involved in the assessment process, though, they can come to see themselves
as competent learners. We need to involve students by making the targets clear to them and
having them help design assessments that reflect those targets. Then we involve them again in
the process of keeping track over time of their learning so they can watch themselves improving.
That's where motivation comes from.
We can also involve students in communicating what they learned, for example, through student-
led conferences, which is probably one of the biggest breakthroughs in communicating about
student achievement in the last century. Grant Wiggins says he wants classrooms in which there
are no surprises and no excuses. Involve students deeply in the assessment process and that's
what you get.
Kids who have given up on learning are at the low end. If we can involve them in the assessment
process to give them renewed confidence and motivation, they're likely to try harder and to
succeed. The kids who had previously given up on themselves have rekindled interest and get
renewed confidence when involved in high quality formative assessment.
Assessments motivate teachers
JSD: Let's talk about teacher motivation. Teachers today are being asked to significantly change
their practice and sustain that over time. Teachers wonder if the new things they’re doing really
makes a difference with students. And it's hard to sustain new practices unless you know they’re
making a difference for students. So it seems that the formative process of assessment would not
only benefit students in the ways you've just described, but help with teacher motivation as well.
Stiggins: I have a strong faith in teachers. They are for the most part in this profession because
they care about kids. I believe that if, on a day-to-day basis, they accurately assess whether kids
are becoming good readers, writers, and math problem solvers and if those teachers are using
classroom assessment smartly, then the once-a-year test scores will take care of themselves.
Good formative assessment processes gives teachers evidence that students are progressing, and
that’s what will keep them going. Formative assessment gives teachers confidence that they’re
getting better and better. Students and teachers feel in control. They don't feel victimized. The
assessment environment we have in the United States today is one in which everyone feels
victimized. And that's got to change.
I dream of the day when state assessments intimidate no one because going into the test everyone
knows what the results will be. Such high-stakes tests should just corroborate everything that
teachers already know about kids because the classroom assessment process has told them
everything they need to know.

Model new practices

JSD: What are the implications of all of this for staff development?
Stiggins: Teachers are not being given the tools they need to help students succeed, and
classroom assessment tools are at the head of the list of what teachers need. We have to allocate
staff development resources to help teachers in this area.
It's important to model in staff development the kind of classroom learning environments and the
internal sense of control that we'd like to have teachers develop for students. If we place a
premium in the classroom on students taking a lead in their own learning, we need to model that
same thing in professional development. In the area of assessment, teachers need the opportunity
to manage their own development and to monitor their increasing competence in classroom
assessment and its impact on kids. If teachers experience that kind of responsibility, they’re more
likely to transfer their professional learning into practices that help kids develop those same
qualities.
Adults and students can hit any target they can see and that holds still for them. If teachers can
see the key characteristics of an assessment-literate educator, they can monitor how they are
progressing toward them. Once they get there, they can look back and say, "That's where I was
and here's where I am now. And who's responsible for that? I am."
Teachers must experience in their professional learning the same type of formative assessment
processes we'd like them to use with kids, such as building a portfolio of their increasing
classroom assessment competence and confidence. Teachers are then responsible for telling the
story of their own learning, and there's a sense of efficacy that comes from that.