A study of the practice of alternative assessment

DANGER: Road Construction Ahead

Paul Trunnell
Harborside Community Center
East Boston

When A. first joined the class one year ago, she met with L., the previous teacher. The classroom was small with fluorescent lighting, but sun shone through the windowpanes. The walls, painted yellow, were concrete blocks. Other students worked on their assignments quietly, alone or in groups, and the assistant teacher moved among them. In the next room children’s voices rang out amidst the banging of blocks and toys.

L. and A. sat down at a table to discuss A.’s reasons for coming to school. A. spoke quietly to her new teacher, conscious of her accent and carefully choosing her words. She was searching for response in her new teacher and considering her new environment. L. spoke softly too, making a lot of eye contact and trying to make A. feel comfortable. After talking for a few minutes, L. suggested they do a formal oral language assessment as a way to better understand A.’s needs. Afterwards, L. went over the results of the assessment. A. began to speak more freely about her difficulties with language and what she hoped to accomplish. L. listened carefully and made suggestions about activities to pursue. At the end of the meeting L. gave A. a book to start working on. A. smiled and thanked her new teacher.

After class, L. wrote up this initial interview:

“Speaks very well. There are some pronunciation difficulties which are being corrected with hearing and reading the word. A. has taught herself to speak English and does very well. She is concerned that, when faced with a crisis situation such as son in the hospital cut foot she can’t express herself in English at all. We will work on this with vocab role playing.

“A. will try to find the time after and during her busy day caring for her family to practice writing. Write notes to her son who will respond with another written note for her to read etc. She will make shopping lists, lists of chores. Practice writing cursive. Read labels. Read children’s books to Rosanna with practicing reading the story ahead of time for understanding pronunciation, then to interject excitement. She will get a pocket dictionary of any sort to use.

“Practice math skills mult div.
“Review the folder of work completed by copying and reading.”

I reprint this episode in full because I believe it exemplifies much of what alternative assessment can be. The whole experience has been one of getting to know each other. The student has been thoroughly assessing her new surroundings as the teacher similarly assessed the student’s needs. The comfort of the interaction has set the tone for the work to come. A. is shown that her needs are important and that the teacher is creating activities specific to these needs.

We learn in the record not only the teacher’s point of view but also A.’s own concern about speaking in a crisis situation. The teacher has also guided A. through an extensive list of learning activities that A. can do in school or at home. All these can be touched on at a later assessment date. Improvement can be clearly defined in terms of personal goals, not disconnected skill attainment. Finally the narrative is translatable to the next teacher walking in the room—in this case, me.

Alternative Assessment. I’ve read and spoken about it in very definitive and appreciative language. Why then is the practice so problematic—while simultaneously rich?

At a day devoted to teacher inquiry, Dulaney Alexander of Operation Bootstrap in Chelsea discussed the progress her program has made in the past year of alternative assessment. To paraphrase, she said, “Well, we don’t use those forms anymore. But the philosophy behind them has become much more rooted in our practice.”

I remember her comment because it is true for me. A year ago I submitted an article to this journal in which I discussed self assessment tools and methods I was using in my class and at our program. Many of the forms were minimal. Some had only existed for a few months. Well, here it is, a year later, and those forms are nowhere to be found in my class or this program. But I am continuing my efforts to better understand my process as a teacher in exploring and developing alternative assessment. In this article, I look at the ways I have experimented and the choices I have made along the way.

When I sat down to write this, I realized I had a lot more questions than answers. In fact I am going to be revealing a lot of (gulp) mistakes, which lord knows teachers don’t really make.

I’ve been teaching for two and a half years at the Harborside Community Center in East Boston. I’ve worked mostly with an ABE/Pre-GED population of diverse personal and ethnic backgrounds. My academic focus has generally included fractions, complete sentences, the food chain, the Conquest of Early America and the presidential race. I have worked in classes varying in size from five to 15 students with a wide range of skill and ability levels. The students’ goals have similarly ranged from GED acquisition as a road to increased employment; to increased self-esteem; to basic language improvement for the sake of day to day communication.

In the class I teach now, each student has something similar to a progress portfolio. The portfolio includes initial registration and assessment tools: writing samples, a math survey, a learning and goals questionnaire, and a reading analysis, all of which are recorded onto math and grammar checklists and an initial learning contract. These documents are updated — ideally — about six weeks into the cycle and then again at the end of the cycle. In addition, students keep learning journals in which I respond; I keep a teaching journal of anecdotal information; and the class participates in a beginning planning session and a final class evaluation that provide the foundation for the curriculum.

The learning contracts and evaluations are very dialogue-oriented. I meet with students to discuss their progress and plan their goals and document what’s been said. To this end, even the writing, math and reading samples and checklists form the conversation-starters, as it were. I find the meat of what we plan comes through the process.

Perhaps a useful way to proceed is to sit down with A.’s and M.’s folders, looking through the contents, and being guided by the use of the materials within: learning contracts, checklists, work samples, self-assessments, and teacher journal entries. I have used these tools most consistently and they should bear the weight of analysis.

I have chosen these students because the dialogue between us has been extensive and clearly illustrates to me, and I hope for the reader, many of the uses and purposes I have in assessment.

Though I relate the educational activities of two students, the focus is not on their learning or my teaching, but on the use and effectiveness of the assessment tools and activities. Also, these tools are valuable, in some way, to me, the teacher, but not necessarily to the student. If you asked them about these tools, they would likely have much different responses (and potentially much different assumptions about what should be assessed and what indicators they need).

STUDENT A:
A.’s folder is more incomplete than some. Her initial intake assessment is missing; some learning questionnaires are not filled out. Checklists stare out like rock face carved by some prehistoric gathering, in some incomprehensible language. A. sees her folder only once every six weeks or even fourteen weeks, if the middle of the cycle seems too hectic to slow down for a period of assessment.

Nevertheless, A.’s progress is clearly revealed in the teacher’s log and the writing samples discussed below. The other tools were not as successful.

LEARNING CONTRACTS — The Problems. A.’s folder contains only two learning contracts for a one-year period. The first is the narrative that I reprinted at the beginning of this article. The second is dated April 27 — eight months after the first one.

How was the first one used? Actually, not at all by me. I began fresh in September when I started teaching the class. I gave all the students an incoming assessment and held initial interviews with them. The info in the learning narrative is basically the same info that I got from A. in the fall.

Was that info recorded? Yes, on notebook paper that was never transferred to a learning contract. At that time I had not been using these tools for some time; they had posed more problems than solutions: too time consuming, not readily valuable, etc. Valuable though was the discussion. As I said, A. told me all of what was in her previous learning narrative. This discussion, in a teacher-student fashion, formed the basis of an oral learning contract which we talked about over the cycle. Also A. was placed in math and reading activities based on her initial assessment.

In December the class conducted our next major assessment. Once again, A. and I discussed the next moves and I recorded the interview on notebook paper (that unfortunately disappeared under the piles on my desk).

The April learning contract (Figure 1) is reprinted here. Much more structured than the learning narrative, it specifies academic categories and a “personal/career” category. Why did the April contract survive? At this point I felt I was coming to understand the purpose and use of these tools again. I wanted to have some sort of record of our discussions.
A. and I sat down with her notebooks and discussed what had been good and what had been difficult. This contract focused heavily on strategies and tasks that A. could work on independently. Again, the curriculum itself would be structured, as much as possible, to address the variety of student needs in the class. The activities this time focused heavily on reading (science) and writing. Math was eliminated because Anna and other students felt that they were having difficulty focusing on too many subjects at once.

Figure 1

A.’s progress is noted only in the comment, “Spelling List is Great!”
Was this independent work completed? No. Why not? A. never got to it. In class she continued writing and reading science—very high level for her ESL abilities. She and other ESL level students focused periodically on grammar and spelling.

So this makes learning contracts sound awful (or at least my use of them). Can I say anything in my defense? Yes. They were not the only source of assessment for A.

TEACHER’S LOG—Success. Based on our discussion in December, A. and I focused on her writing. Our process in this endeavor is shown most clearly in the teacher’s log that I keep daily. Here are the entries I penned for A. that Spring. These show her progress from being a frustrated writer to having a much better attitude and much better success.

1/20 — “Writing is daunting.”

1/27 — “Her writings were very good, did not question her spelling or grammar, took her some time to complete 1 1/2 hours.”

2/1 — “... took 2 1/2 hours to do the MLK writing assignment. ‘I don’t like to write.’”

2/3 — wrote a whole page—got started on her own, we talked it out two or three times and then picked the very first thing, then the second, and so on. Did very well. Worked on spelling afterwards. Rules and sight words.”

2/4 — “A. to practice spelling is copying the story Little Italy—decided to do it on own. She enjoys story and said that spelling words that we went over she saw in the story. Making connections. Is self-motivated.”

2/10 — “Writing, spelling, copied, seems more confident. Grammar scrambles. Checked her own spelling first. Got about half. Had Lorenzo [a fellow student] help and then I helped. Used her spelling list.”

3/10— “A. once again — ‘I’m learning a lot.’”

4/7 — “Finished newspaper stories—her spelling is getting very good... she also made a ‘hide-a-word’ for the skills page…”

4/13 — “A.’s writing is getting longer, more comfortable. We went over past tense verbs in a story she wrote last night.”

The log records a clear sense of progress. This record can be made available to the student to show her the progress she has made.

Though some of the entries are not backed up with details or reasons, many entries explain the strategies and activities that she is using to success: her personal spelling list, having her peers assist her, ignoring grammar and spelling errors to encourage her work on content, having process conversations with her. Also some comments cause me to reflect on assignments that were ill-fitted for Anna, for example, a writing on Martin Luther King Day when she was not fully aware of who he was.

The entries have emerged when she and I would discuss her progress, in the form of encouragement—”remember when you...”. In this way it served as a reminder for me.

When A. looked at this record (I gave it to her as I was preparing this article) she recalled all I had written and was proud of the progress she had made.

CHECKLISTS. Checklists (Figure 2) proved problematic with A. We had a grammar and a basic math skills checklist. The math checklist was too broad and did not represent the advances A. was making — advances that were small, skill-wise, but were very noticeable regarding strategies. She was successful working on math if she had the opportunity to work on it for several days at a time — not just one period. She understood better in a class format than independently. She was very good with the use of manipulatives. She worked well cooperatively. If we had a checklist for this, or at least a strategies list, then her progress would be much more apparent.
Though there is no record, the class structure regarding math was re-shaped as a result of students like A. Students were taken off an independently-paced workbook diet and fed group tasks, often with manipulatives and a lot of repetition. Perhaps to the credit of this structural response, A. seemed to become much more confident and self-aware in pursuing her math work. She went from thinking she could not do it to realizing she just hated it. She and other students proposed a structural change because of their frustration in pursuing math on a one-day-a-week schedule. The result was to focus on one subject at a time, for a whole week or weeks. This to me is a clear advance in learning self-awareness and empowerment—though it is nowhere recorded.
These conclusions have made me return to the checklists and consider how to revise them to better suit the needs of the class and the students. The revision will include more strategies and learning behaviors and also be broken into smaller, more measurable steps.

Figure 2

WRITING SAMPLES. The writing samples contained in A.’s progress folder are good indications of how we focused on process together, with three drafts of a writing included. Importantly, this was the one thing in the folder that A. could look at and clearly sense her progress. The first sample we have, from last fall, shows a short corrected piece that still contains some grammar and writing and spelling mistakes. The second sample are all three drafts of a piece she had worked on in the Spring. She looked at this during our April conference and pointed out to me the progress she had made: better spelling, a longer piece, clearer writing. She could also see her process, that her first draft did not have to be perfect but that she would have several passes to improve it. She was very proud of her progress.

SELF-ASSESSMENTS. A.’s December self-evaluation is the only one I have on file. Her comments are the comments of many different students—broad and feeling-based.
“We learned alte about America and Indian... I don’t understand math divicion... I wish to learned more about riding and writing...”
These comments are too broad to indicate much progress. The strength of this tool is more in the process. We do it as a class. The class discussion focuses on the curriculum, what has been valuable, and what we want to focus on in the future. When we do these, students seem very involved in answering the questions, too, which I think is an indication that taking the time to reflect is valuable, even if the record is so general.

STUDENT M.
M.’s folder resembles a “textbook” progress portfolio. There is a more complete array of contracts and checklists. Like A.’s folder, there are writing samples that M. chose to include in this folder, as well as assessment tools. In M.’s case these include a grammar pretest from one of the workbooks we use in the class. Also there are filled out reading and writing behavior checklists, adapted or borrowed from the Read/Write Now program in Springfield, MA.
M. is more familiar with her folder, too. She has paged carefully through the contents at different occasions.

LEARNING CONTRACTS—a useful tool. M.’s learning contract focuses her toward the External Diploma Program, a high school diploma program run by the Boston Public Schools. This specific, external goal provides helpful direction for both of us. Her January list offers independent activities for her completion. Goals also include specific competencies to achieve.

Reading Goal — to understand bigger words.
Make a list of words and go over these
Read bigger words in class
Use a vocabulary book to build your understanding

Writing —
Continue the good work
Practice for EDP
Work on editing list

Grammar —
Complex sentences
Punctuation—Commas

Math —
Units of Measure
Fractions

Other —EDP or GED
take EDP pretests or plan to take GED at the end of March

This contract has been a more effective tool with M. than with A., evident in the checks and comments that were placed on it during our April conference. It was used much more as intended, as a contract, and advances were noted and commended.

The April contract is more bare. The Reading section suggests again to understand bigger words (her stated goal) with weekly work in a vocabulary book as a suggested independent activity. The Grammar section is blank, and the Writing section suggests only an edit list. The Math section lists specific math activities (“adding with different denominators... whole numbers/mixed numbers/improper fractions”) as well as an asterisk next to the goal “Become more Independent.”

What became important in April, however, was a checklist made for her by the EDP program assessor. M. had taken the pretests and needed to master some math and writing skills before she could enroll in the program. A copy of this list was included in the progress portfolio and also in M.’s notebook. This provided her with a lot of self-direction and was referred to almost daily throughout the cycle.

This contract or checklist was a list on a sheet of notebook paper. Yet M. held on to it for three months while she worked towards completing those goals. As such, it shows that forms don’t have to be carefully typeset or formatted to be effective.

In our June conference, M. announced that she was almost complete with her work toward the EDP. (The checklist had provided her with an exceptional tool for keeping herself on target). Moreover, her new contract reads very successfully. Notice the switch between her and my voice:

MATH: a lot better; didn’t know to much about fractions and decimals and measurements [before]; [I now know more about] stores and how much things are going to cost—and also paying bills.

(Working more independently-checking yourself and re-doing your problems if necessary.)

“I like to do math now—seems to be a lot easier.

(If you come to a problem you don’t understand, you’ll come back to it later, try to figure out what would make sense, go to a new page and come back to figure it out.)

Notice that the comments focus on strategies rather than skills acquisition. Also, the recording relies heavily on self-report. Also, it is not a “contract” in the formal sense. It is halfway between an evaluation and a goals list. It does not require a signature, but it is an oral agreement. It is very effective as a record of strategies tried and true, or abandoned.
M.’s 5 week summer plan focuses her heavily on the EDP skills she has yet to master.

TEACHER’S LOG—how difficult it really was. I had an ongoing struggle with M. regarding independence. I say this only to give some background to help explain the sometimes emotional recordings in the teacher’s log regarding M.’s progress. The reader should understand the tool’s ability to record how difficult learning can really be, a process that does not show up on a checklist or in a grade or even a learning contract.

2/1—”she doesn’t retain well...”

2/3—”M.—up to page 44 (some difficulty with directions)”

2/8—”she said, ‘I feel like I’m doing better than before’... she has to be coaxed through reducing...”

2/9—”worked on math—addition of unlike denominators, whole numbers, reducing, and simplifying—I had her work with paper manipulatives. She said it helps a little to use paper. She was having trouble with simplifying for ex: 11/8 = 1 3/8. The division step keeps confusing her. I tried to get her to do it without division step—just do it in her head. But that was still a challenge—she doesn’t believe she can do it.”

2/10—Grammar stuff confused her—directions, pg. 37. Has she worked on this? I think so. Have her check her papers. She feels comfortable paired with someone, but she wants [my] okay. Safety and security is very important to her.

3/30—she successfully ploughed through 2 digit division—still wanted help, but was able to solve many problems on her own.

4/13—worked on fractions—again id’d problems when directed, but needed a lot of support to get there. I gave less than usual. When she worked on another segment, she said she didn’t understand. I said read the directions. She gave up in a second. I told her to take five minutes. She started crying and I held my ground and said I will help you in 5 minutes—try to figure it out—she complained that the directions were short. She was right. I showed her the lengthy example and explanations that were on the same page. She hadn’t realized. She apologized for crying. I told her I want her to work independently. She held on and got work done. Good for her.

5/10—focus on one subject at a time...

5/17—checked her own math work—got many of them right...

Very emotional but clearly a showing of what learning is—an emotional and highly complicated task that does not only include skill acquisition. This is recorded in detail here. Note—mostly very spare, not a lot of details. The detailed entry of 2/9 is helpful, I am sure, for the reader to understand better the difficulty. But remember, this is not designed for an outside reader.
This process has been discussed by M. and me since. She agrees she is working more independently. Again, she has not seen these notes. Would I share these with her the way I would share the notes with A.? Yes. I think it is respectful of a student to be up front about your teaching assumptions—if done in a sensitive manner.

Another obvious value of these notes is for my own improvement. What strategies have I used? What has worked? What hasn’t? This example, for me, is one of the most powerful of my teaching beliefs. Perhaps there is a way that it can be used too, in teacher sharing at my center, or in a teacher self-evaluation.

CHECKLISTS. M. benefited more from checklists than A. This was most certainly true of the highly motivating EDP checklist that she was using. A., as an upper level ESL student, was out of range of the checklists that were in our class for higher level ABE math and grammar skills.

Over time, M. made clear progress on the math checklist, though again, her actual progress in self-motivation and learning strategies were still not listed on a checklist. Her progress on a grammar checklist was more ill-defined. Her initial ability was measured on a workbook pretest. The checklist, which is patterned after the competencies that were worked on in the workbook, does not record much of M.’s progress because M.’s work in the book was sporadic. The checklist needed to better reflect the actual work she was doing in order to indicate progress.

Figure 3

WRITING SAMPLES. M.’s writing samples are much less instructive than A.’s. Why? She has three different samples from over the year that she included when asked to choose something. They do not reflect the process reflected in A.’s. They, to my eye, look very similar in terms of style and ability. Why? When she came into the class, M. was already a competent writer. She has the ability to write long, personal narrative pieces. Her spelling is very good. Our focus only recently has been on critical, non-narrative writing. When these samples are included in her folder, they will indicate the culmination of a lot of work. For the meantime, the work reflects M.’s competence but not her advance.

SELF-ASSESSMENTS. M.’s December self-assessment reports “we learned about Columbus discovering a new Continent” and that the most meaningful of what we’d studied was math and science. Her concerns about the class include that many people come to class late and this seems frustrating to her. Also, a cooperative project frustrated her because “we could not make up our minds for a long while.”

Figure 4

This is vague in terms of acquired skills; but valuable in terms of learning attitudes. It could be concluded that M. did not at the time of this recording enjoy cooperative projects. Also, she gave me a cue as a teacher that the class could be more structured—or at least she would prefer her learning experience to be as such.

Her May self-assessment includes a lot of self-praise and awareness of learning. “What I am most proud of is knowing what and who I am.” “My biggest breakthrough was figuring things out that I was not sure of before.” “My favorite class was science because I learned things I never knew before.” “The goals I did not achieve are learning bigger words because I do not understand them.”

The difference in these comments is in part controlled by the tools: different questions were used on different occasions. The latter occasion seems to have been much more effective in revealing learning attitudes and encouraging self-assessment. Though her descriptions are still a little vague, I think this is because self-assessment is a challenge.

Reflections on my Exploration Into Assessment

WHAT do I think I am assessing?
Clearly I am not assessing for skill acquisition alone. I am looking for increases in confidence, independence, learning self-awareness, ability to take new challenges. I am trying to understand people’s different learning styles: whether they work well cooperatively or independently; whether structure is essential for self-motivation. I want to understand the student’s process. I want to see—and I want the student to see—the complicated reality of learning.

Am I REALLY assessing it?
The checklists that I use are skills-based, not strategy-based, and thus do not record all the information I want. Though I may speak to the students of their advances in these affective areas, the forms we use do not necessarily speak the same language. The teacher’s log and the learning contracts do record the strategies and attitudes, as do the self assessments. The writing samples can show process as well as product.

Activities need to be ROUTINE to show progress
Though it is a valuable process, to sit down with students and discuss their goals, the learning contract itself is useful mostly when it is used periodically, and updated. Independent activities are effective if they are narrowly targeted toward the completion of a goal such as entrance into the EDP program. And I think independent activities need to be constantly reinforced—perhaps a weekly check-in time with a student; or time slotted in class for independent work (neither of which my class had).

Checklists need to reflect the work that is being conducted in the classroom.
The competencies need to be specific and attainable. If possible, checklists could be made for strategies and learning attitudes and not just skills. They need to be referred to often enough so that they are seen as a tool and not an artifact from an archeological dig.

All this is fine. But what is helpful FOR THE STUDENT?
I have told you what is valuable to me. But only a few of these tools and activities seem to have been genuinely appreciated by the students. The Writing Sample was the only thing A. used to report her own progress. The EDP checklist was the one device that M. seemed to “own.” A powerful trait of alternative assessment is that it has the possibility to become the property of the students.

Teaching logs are valuable for me, the teacher. And valuable to show process—the complicatedness of the learning negotiations. If the students get to see it, then it will be helpful for them too.

If the tools are supposed to empower the students, then the materials need to be in the possession of the students. Teacher’s logs need to be provided and discussed. The checklists and contracts need to be possessed by the students. The class needs to have time and structure to accommodate reflecting and utilizing these tools.

It is important for teachers to discuss the use of these tools. They are alternative, which means that, potentially, each class is using different forms and procedures. In a sense, we are all involved in exploring the backroads. Some of us with compasses in hand, carefully mapping our road; but probably more of us taking the sudden turn off and trying to remember which road led where.

The GOALS project has allowed many of us the resources to carefully map our route, and to compare our travels. I hope the “Atlas” we have compiled in our Toolkit will help others explore other roads and paths, and that we will all have the opportunity to share, revise, and learn from each other.

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This article was published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 5 (October 1993), SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1993.

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.