Do you remember your science tests growing up? For so many of us, they were disconnected from the things that were important to our lives as students. When assessments don't matter to students, students don't put their best thinking forward. The whole point of science assessments is to provide feedback that can help students meet their science learning goals and we can't do that if we don't provide students with the opportunity to show what they know and can do in compelling, positive ways.
When student assessments shift toward performances that value the ideas students bring to the table, we learn more about student learning. During the task annotation process, we paid close attention to how assessments support the diverse students who may be responding to the task--and how that impacts what we can conclude about student progress. As it turns out, many of the same features that promote equity and fairness also ensure that assessments can elicit useful information from students including:
• Emphasizing tasks that are relevant and meaningful to students emphasizes features of tasks and phenomena/problems that also ensure that the three dimensions are needed to complete the task.
• Giving students opportunities to make their thinking and reasoning visible, rather than just right and wrong answers, also ensure that students are using the three dimensions in service of sense-making, not just regurgitating facts, definitions, or procedures.
• Making sure that students' ideas are not only included in assessments but are valued in assessments creates opportunities for students to more completely share the facets of their current understanding.
• Providing students with multiple ways to make their thinking visible ensures that any conclusions about student performance is well-supported.
The Task Screener describes some of the most important features of equitable assessment tasks, and the annotated tasks and their summaries highlight how tasks support all students and what could be done to make them even better. These can help us think about how we make sure our assessments are serving students as effectively as possible.
In learning,
The Achieve Team
https://www.achieve.org/publications/science-task-annotations-equity