Does any one else spend a good deal of their team meeting planning time thinking and talking about CFAs? These are a new thing for Metro this year, it seems, and I know the last two schools I've been at really haven't seemed to figure it out yet. We all know what a formative assessment is supposed to be, but it seems like in order to be a good formative assessment, it needs to be over what we're teaching. For them to be common, then we all need to be teaching the same thing. I'm not sure about y'all, but I know that my team isn't teaching the same thing, at the same time, or in the same way. Yet, we are still giving the same assessments. This doesn't really make any sense to me. I see the point of attempting to give the CFAs and trying to get a feel for what students know across classrooms, but if you're not teaching the same thing then the formative assessment really seems pointless.
How have y'all seen this done in your schools? Has it been effective?
Additionally, my principal wants consistent scores of 85% or higher on all the CFAs across our students. This seems anti-intuitive to me because if this is truly a formative assessment then shouldn't it be okay for our students to have any kind of score? Formative assessments show us what our students still need to learn. If all of our students have an 85% or higher, then it seems like we wouldn't need to continue teaching the material. What do y'all think about having this type of grade requirement for our formative assessments? What type of formatives have you been using/seeing in your classrooms?
Because I am also at Hickman, my class is constantly taking CFA's as well. Every week, my first grade team meets to discuss what needs to be taught that week and which topic needs to be tested. My team teaches a subject and then the next week has a CFA for the students to take on the topic. This way, they have more than enough time to learn the material no matter the classroom or teacher. However, my class has yet to have 80 percent or more pass any of the CFA's. This is the same for all of the first grade classes. My teachers are frustrated and are unsure of what needs to be done because it seems like all of the students need review on all of the materials. They are also frustrated that it is hard to find time to "reteach," or review all topics while also keeping up with the upcoming ones as well.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, this past week, first grade gave a CFA on tens and ones. One of the first grade teachers created the assessment to give to all of the classes. I am pretty confident that my students have mastered tens and ones and have shown to do really well on my own assessments. However, because of the way it was written, only 9 of my students passed this CFA. Although this is extremely disappointing to my teacher and I, I know that it as because they were unfamiliar with the way the questions were asked. Words such as "represents," and "values," were present on the test. This may have been the way the students in the other first grade class were taught, but this was not the way my students were taught. Because of this, my students were unable to succeed. I am not completely sure that this is fair because I know my students understand the concept and have succeeded in the past.
So I have not seen these CFAs, but here's a couple relevant thoughts. My understanding of formative assessments or benchmark assessments is to see how students are doing in their preparation for TCAP. In this context I think it makes sense the teachers would be tested on the same things--the TCAP does not differentiate per teacher. Then it would also make sense that the principal would want high scores. It is formative in the sense that it lets you know if you need to work on something before TCAP, but also that ideally you will be prepared just by what you're doing in the classroom. Does this seem true in your classroom?
ReplyDeleteBecause we don't take a end of year test in second grade, I've never thought of them as a preparation for TCAP, but that's a good point, Emily. I wonder... in light of the article we just read, if the better way to measure student's preparation for TCAP would not be to give a CFA weekly that as Dana mentioned was made by individual teachers to measure skills in the way they specifically have taught them, but to give a TCAP-like test 3-4 times a year that measure all the skills that are on the test and see how students are progressing. Essentially like the progress monitoring we are doing with AIMS-web in i-time, but for TCAP, and less often. I know this would take more time, but it seems like it would save time with these CFAs that aren't really helping anyone, since all of our teachers write them off as pointless. If the students took a test that measured all the skills the TCAP did, the teachers could look and see what their students were and were not getting based on what they had and had not taught and then go back and cover material again or move on. This would seem to me to give a much more realistic feeling of what's really going to in our classrooms to prepare our students for TCAP than a teacher-made assessment that seems to have no relevance to end-of-year testing or what's currently happening in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteSally, I share your frustration with the CFAs and I like your idea on having the 3-4x yearly assessments on all TCAP skills.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, the CFA tests aren't the worst thing in the world, but what really bothers me about them is that they have to be 5 questions--and we all know that means the questions are worth 20 points each. And in 4th grade, those go straight into the gradebook. This is sad to say, but after seeing how poorly the students were doing on some of the CFA tests, the 4th grade literacy team intentionally started making the CFA tests easier. The mentality was, "Why are we going to test them on things that we know they're going to get wrong, and that are going to make us look bad?" These aren't bad teachers, but that's the mentality that the CFA tests are giving them. They may be "TCAP prep," but I certainly don't think they're an accurate reflection of the students' abilities, or--more importantly--their progress and learning.
What you're suggesting with the 3-4x yearly does sound similar to what we do in intervention. I have tier II math, and we planned our lessons directly based on what the most students were missing on the weekly progress monitoring tests. Admittedly, this is the epitome of "teaching to the test" because we are literally teaching them what they need to know to make their scores go up every week. BUT if it was less often and more of a "spot-check" than the sole means of assessment, I think it would be really useful to make sure the students are on track for TCAP, without overwhelming them with test prep.