Transforming Assessment

Advisory Group on Provincial Assessment Report now posted (PDF).

Exploring Curriculum Design: Transforming Curriculum and Assessment (PDF) outlines a set of principles identified through provincial consultations to guide the redesigning of curriculum and assessment. Central among the principles identified through provincial consultations was that assessment and evaluation must be aligned with changed emphases in redesigned curriculum. Those emphases include:

• literacy and numeracy foundations (essential for deeper learning in all years of schooling),
• core competencies (those competencies that students need to succeed in their education and their lives), and
• essential ideas and processes for deeper learning (giving attention to what students should know, do and understand).

Like redesigned curricula, future assessment of all forms will consider literacy and numeracy foundations, core competencies, and essential concepts and content. Interdisciplinary learning and consideration of flexible learning environments also have implications for assessment.

With curriculum redesign underway, the ministry continues to seek input on BC’s future assessment programs and approaches.

Questions are presented at the end of this web page. Please forward your ideas and comments to curriculum@gov.bc.ca.

Forms of Assessment

A central purpose of all assessment is to understand where learners are in their learning at the time of assessment with the objective of improving their learning. All forms of assessment play an important role in understanding and improving student learning. The ministry is involved with three forms of assessment:

• Support for Classroom Assessment
• Provincial Assessments and Examinations
• National and International Assessments

Support for Classroom Assessment

Through the feedback, educators are asking for more information about assessment resources and guidelines.  Directions for assessment are beginning to emerge through a variety of strategies.  The following resources may play an important role in assessment and communicating student learning.

Resources

• Core competency profiles describe ways students demonstrate core competencies at different phases of development.  Each competency will be described through a set of profiles that represent phases of growth or development.  The Ministry, in collaboration with development teams of teachers from over 20 school districts are currently designing core competency profiles and collecting student illustrations. The competency profiles and illustrations will be essential resources to support assessment of thinking, communication and personal and social awareness and responsibility.
• Reading, writing and numeracy performance standards will continue to play a useful and essential role for assessment of student progress in the literacy and numeracy foundations. The reading, writing and numeracy performance standards were empirically based standards; that is, the standards were developed by groups of teachers using authentic samples of student’s work.  Consideration will be given to refreshing and revising the student samples and aligning any other aspects that are required to changed emphasis in curricula.    (Note, the social responsibility performance standards will be used as a starting point to develop the social competency profiles).
•  Learning progressions based on the learning standards of each area of learning, may be developed to form a clear connection between the renewed curricula and formative and summative assessment. Learning progressions also could support teachers’ efforts to focus assessment on the personalized learning needs of students. More details are forthcoming.

Guidelines

When curriculum and core competencies are further developed, classroom assessment and reporting legislation, policy and guidelines will be updated to reflect changing emphases.

A focus on Assessment for Learning

Greater emphasis will be put on assessment “for” learning

• Assessment for learning will be central within the redesigned curriculum and assessment framework. Assessment is ongoing and inseparable from the instructional, assessment and learning cycle.
• Personalization lends itself to assessment as learning, student involvement in setting criteria and design of inquiries, and to self- and peer-assessment. As curriculum becomes more personalized, with reduced prescriptive content and more flexibility, assessment will follow accordingly.
• Renewed assessment principles will be needed to support the emphasis on Assessment for Learning and the development of any renewed assessment support material.

Assessment experts have commented on BC’s directions. For example, Tom Schimmer gives us the following advice as we consider curriculum and assessment alignment:

“a balanced approach to classroom assessment is still the key to maximizing student achievement. Whether the focus is on mastery of curricular content and skills or the development of core competencies, the day-to-day assessment work at the classroom level is what moves learning forward. Balance is both about understanding the role formative and summative assessment play in sound instructional design and about using a variety of assessment methods. A balanced and effective approach to assessment allows students to know where they are in relation to the intended learning, allows teachers to maintain the instructional agility necessary to identify what's next, and allows both to accurately communicate the levels of proficiency students are reaching.”

“aligning our assessments to our curriculum is the only way to ensure that our assessments yield accurate information about our students' levels of proficiency. Knowing what we're assessing should always drive our assessment methods. Balanced assessment isn't about favouring one type of assessment; it's about favouring the assessment method that is the most accurate fit for the curricular content or competency being assessed. This is especially true at the classroom level where we know assessment (and the subsequent descriptive feedback) can move learning forward, lead to greater student engagement, and allow teachers to make pinpoint decisions about what comes next.”

Proposed Principles for Classroom Assessment

The draft assessment principles proposed below are based on the works of several assessment experts in Canada. These principles are the foundation of sound assessment practices. They are intended to support teachers with classroom assessment and align with the nature of redesigned curricula.

• Classroom assessment provides information to support personalization of learning, to improve learning, and to communicate with parents.
• Classroom assessment happens in an ongoing fashion and should be seamlessly intertwined with instruction. Assessment is designed to give timely feedback.
• Classroom assessments should be based on clear criteria and examples so that students know what is expected.
• Students should be part of the assessment process and involved in setting criteria, setting their own learning goals and designing demonstrations.
• Classroom assessments should include a wide variety of opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning.
• Performance tasks should be substantial and get at deeper learning and understanding.
• Support materials developed for classroom assessment should provide teachers with a good understanding of how skills or processes are expected to develop (to make clear what “is next”).
• Classroom assessment is not an event. Assessment is a natural outflow of the instruction-assessment-evaluation-learning cycle.
• Assessment is tied to the learning, not behaviours. It is important to separate out student behaviours not related to the learning standards. 

Communicating Student Learning (Reporting)

Aligning curriculum, assessment, evaluation and communicating student learning approaches will be key in these transformation efforts. To date, consultations regarding communicating student learning have resulted in the following recommendations:

• Shift from “reporting” to “communicating student learning”
• Support meaningful communication between teachers, parents, and learners
• Report on core competencies and key areas of learning
• Focus on learning standards and big ideas in areas of learning (subjects)
• Enable ongoing communication (with provincial guidelines and supports)
• Maintain formal, written summative reports at key times in the year
• Use clear performance standards-based language
• Move toward meaningful descriptions/collections/demonstrations of student learning. 

Provincial Assessments and Examinations

BC’s provincial assessment programs currently include the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) for grades 4 and 7 and Provincial Examinations at grades 10, 11 and 12.

We recognize that provincial assessments and provincial examinations will need to shift in order to align with the changed emphases in redesigned curriculum. Provincial assessments and examinations at key points in schooling will continue to provide an external measure of student learning and serve as key performance indicators.

In 2013/14, a group of education stakeholders [Advisory Group on Provincial Assessment (AGPA)] met to discuss BC’s future assessment program. The stakeholders reached agreement on a set of purposes and principles for provincial assessment.  The ministry has analyzed the report findings, and discussed options for K-12 provincial assessments as well as definitions of provincial numeracy and literacy assessments. Read the report (PDF).

A working group on provincial assessment is now being formed to operationalize the recommendations and begin to redesign the specifications for BC’s elementary assessment program.  More details will be available over the coming months.

Two important suggestions for provincial assessment came from the series of regional consultation sessions on the provincial graduation program held in the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013. They suggested that exit examinations should focus on literacy, numeracy, and competencies and that graduation requirements should include an authentic exit demonstration of learning.

AGPA will be reconvened during the spring of 2015 to inform the work at the secondary level. As well, development of new models for provincial assessment at the secondary level will begin in 2015.  More details on these developments will be available by the summer of 2015.

Assessments and examinations will continue to be developed by BC educators and be designed to complement and support teachers’ ongoing assessments.  The province plans to use a more transparent and inclusive process for these developments.
 

National and International Assessments

One other form of assessment that BC engages in is national and international assessments. National and international assessments serve as external reference points for student performance allowing BC to compare itself to the performance of other jurisdictions in relation to international standards. It should be noted that these assessments are not a direct match to BC’s curricular objectives and jurisdictions have limited control over their design. They do, however, provide rich contextual information about other jurisdictions that can be correlated to achievement.

As shown in the table below, BC currently participates in the Pan Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). These assessments occur every 3-5 years and BC participates with a random sample of students. They are designed by central organizations (e.g., OECD) with input from jurisdictions. It is expected BC will continue participating in these assessments in the future.

	Age/Grade	Areas	Cycle	Organization
PIRLS	Grade 4	Reading	Every 5 years	International (IEA)
PISA	Age 15  year olds	Reading, Math, Science	Every 3 years	International (OECD)
PCAP	Grade 8	Reading, Math, Science	Every 3 years	National (CMEC)

Questions

The curriculum redesign in BC supports the personalization of learning and includes such features as big ideas, core competencies, and the encouragement of multidisciplinary approaches. Given such emphases:

1. What classroom assessment resources would be most useful for teachers?
2. What provincial reporting policies should be developed to support the directions of the redesigned curriculum?
3. What are some innovative and creative models the province could adopt that would align provincial assessment with the new curriculum emphases?

Please forward your feedback or ideas to curriculum@gov.bc.ca