What are common assessments?

If a school decides to
use common assessments, what arrangements can
the principal put into place to provide teachers with
the time for writing the assessments?

Common assessments are ones in which the

expectations, standards, and questions are developed by a
team of teachers teaching a given subject. These
assessments are generally given in the same time frame
across a grade level, and the data is discussed and analyzed
by the same group of teachers. By utilizing common
assessments Jackic (2009) discussed how beneficial it is to
have a group of teachers be able to analyze and respond to
the data. Since formative assessments are essential to know
where to take your teaching on a day-to-day basis, the
ability to collaborate with colleagues and their teaching
strategies is unprecedented.
While common assessments are extremely beneficial,
they can also be very time consuming. Teachers will need
support in the process of developing and assessing the
assessments. Since formative assessments are given often,
the cycle that a team must go through is constant;
determine the assessments purpose, create the assessment,
analyze the results, and then make a plan to meet the needs
surfaced. Since this will all require time, it is important for
the principal to ensure that teams are being given time to
meet and discuss. Administration can either create a
schedule that will allow for this to be done during the day at
a planning time, or allow for some staff development time to
be allotted towards that purpose.
On my campus, common assessments are a
requirement. My team gets together often to create common
learning checks to see where our students are with their
learning. I feel like we try and check in at least every 7
teaching days or so of any given subject with some sort of
formative assessment. This allows for us to constantly by
adjusting out teaching and to support each other in areas we
may need. We also have a FLEX time in our district that is a
required 30 min everyday. This 30 min. is intended
specifically to allow us to hit those students we see need
more support in an area; this all comes from our formative
assessments. Our schedule lends itself nicely to the common
assessment cycle. We have designated Tuesday as the day
that we meet as a team with our instructional coach. This is
50 min once a week that we go through the common
assessment process, wherever we may be. This is the first
year where I feel like we have a good grasp on this process,
and I am excited to see its results as we approach our
summative assessment season.

Resources:

Jakicic,C.(2009).Aprincipalsguidetoassessment.InT.R.Guskey
(Ed.)Theprincipalasassessmentleader(pp.5370).Bloomington,
IN:SolutionTreePress