Introduction

Volume 12: Experiences with Standards-Based Reform

Alison Simmons
Editor SABES Central
Resource Center / World Education

In this volume of Adventures in Assessment, teachers and practitioners write about their experiences with standards-based reform initiatives at both the state and national levels. In the process of translating these initiatives into everyday practice, they have come to a better understanding of their students, curricula and assessment, and the importance of getting students and teachers involved in identifying what it is they need/want to know and for what purpose and context.

Sherry Spaulding and Roseann Ritter were part of the implementation phase of the Massachusetts ESOL frameworks project. They write about their involvement in the project and how it helped them better understand the role of standards in developing curriculum and the importance of developing ways to understand what students know, and want and need to know.

Beth Brockman participated in Phase Two of her state's framework initiative in North Carolina. In her look at the draft frameworks developed by practitioners in her state, she focuses on the non-language outcomes of her students and how these could fit into a framework for assessment. For more information about the North Carolina ESOL Frameworks contact Literacy South, (919) 682-8108.

At the national level, Peggy McGuire, assessment coordinator for Equipped for the Future (EFF), leads us through EFF's assessment framework. She discusses the development and the implementation of the framework and future activities. She helps us see how it is linked closely to standards and how assessment is more than just one dimension, one standard and one tool. Their approach can help us see how this initiative can connect to our own state initiatives as well as our own classroom practice. For more information on EFF, check out http://www.nifl.gov/eff, or call 1-877-433-7827.

In What Makes a Good Teacher? Marie Hassett identifies eight characteristics of a good teacher. She hopes these will be helpful as we look at and reflect on our own teaching and connection to our students.

Caroline Gear, Rebecca Shiffren and Steve Kurtz write about the importance of empowering teachers to problem solve about classroom issues. They introduce a tool that was developed at the Center for Teacher Education at The School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont . This tool helped them establish a way to give and receive feedback that involved the teacher more in the process.

In Learning from Experience, Bernie Driscoll from the Taunton Adult Learning Center shares her math assessment process and tool and talks about the difficulty
students may have when faced with an assessment tool that is too daunting.

Many teachers are looking at standards- based assessment and what it means for them and their classrooms. As the initiatives grow in use, it would be interesting to hear what other teachers are doing to translate these initiatives into practice. What does it mean to develop assessment tools, to write assessment criteria? To develop performance standards? How are we using the EFF standards in our classrooms? How are we using the other frameworks to better understand what it is our students know, need to know and be able to do?

As always we welcome your thoughts and ideas. If you would like to submit an article or have comments, please feel free to contact me at asimmons@worlded.org.

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment,
Volume 12 (Winter 2000),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2000.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.