Principle P3: Practice Standards-based Assessment
The HOPE principle P3, compels teachers to – practice standards-based assessment. Standards-based assessment means that the strategies, tools, and methods I use to assess student evidence-of-learning are aligned with district, state, and national standards for grade-level learning expectations. In an earlier post titled, Principle O1: Organized Curriculum Aligned to Standards, I mentioned that I had been working on finding ways to organize and align my curriculum to the Lake Washington School District (LWSD) draft of “Power Standards” for Visual Art. Although these standards are still being conceived, they have been written to align with the Visual Arts Standards from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI, 2011).
Identity Print Project Rubric
During the past week I planned and taught a woodblock printing project unit, titled Identity Prints, which was planned to assess against the evidence I collected from students that purposely aligns with the LWSD Proficiency Scales for Visual Art. For this project, my mentor teacher and I co-wrote the rubric (link above) which shows how we will assess the Identity Prints project according to three of the LWSD Power Standards (PS1, PS3, PS), and how we can grade aligning to the 1-2-3-4 Proficiency Scale model by converting to point score using the Angoff and Cut Scores for cut-scores (A requirement of the district’s scoring system). My mentor teacher and I are excited because we feel like this rubric can be helpful to all the performance-based disciplines (Music, Wood-Shop, Dance etc.) in aligning their assessments to the district standards and proficiency scales. We have since shown it to our building’s principal and it is now being evaluated at the district office.
This week I will apply our rubric as I grade the student’s finished Identity Prints project. My goal is that the graded rubric will clearly communicate how students demonstrated learning (or not) by providing evidence (or not) in their finished artwork, written self-reflection, and process sketchbook. Because I based the type of evidence on the LWSD Proficiency Scales and aligned the curriculum content to the district’s Power Standards, I am demonstrating my understanding of the HOPE standard P3, by practicing standards-based assessment. Going forward I want to try to integrate some of the language from the Common Core standards for literacy and presentation because it is an aspect that is missing from the LWSD standards. I want to integrate academic language into all of the curriculum and assessments I offer because I feel that literacy learning is foundational to success in school and life.
Susanna Jones bPortfolio 