The High Desert Education Service District helps teachers and data teams create regular, short-term methods of assessing student performance. Common Formative Assessments are periodic or interim assessments, collaboratively designed by grade-level or course teams of teachers, and administered to all students in a grade level or course several times during the quarter, semester, trimester, or entire school year. Designed as matching pre- and post-assessments to ensure same-assessment to same-assessment comparisons, they are similar in design and format to district and state assessments.
The goal is to follow students closely to see if they are learning what is being taught and to make necessary adjustments in teaching quickly to help students meet standards.

Common formative assessment items are intentionally aligned to the district’s/school’s essential (Power/priority) standards only and reflect a blend of item types, including selected-response (multiple choice, true/false, matching) and constructed-response (short- or extended). Teachers participating in Data Teams analyze student assessment results to plan and differentiate instruction. Such results provide predictive value as to how students are likely to do on each succeeding assessment (school, district, and state) in time for teachers to make instructional modifications.

Through a Sustainability grant from the Oregon Department of Education, Secondary teachers from the High Desert ESD, Harney ESD, Jefferson ESD and Lake ESD worked through the ODE Standards and development of Common Formative Assessments process over the course of the 2009-10 school year. Their work in both Math and Science lead to the prioritization of their standards as well as the development of Common Formative Assessments of the content and skills included in those standards. Read more…

The two-day seminar is based on the book, Common Formative Assessments: How to Connect Standards-based Instruction and Assessment, by Larry Ainsworth and Donald Viegut (Corwin Press, 2006)

To arrange a two-day/12 contact hour seminar contact Kathy Emerson  Kathy.emerson@hdesd.org Read more...