Leading the Way

You’ve heard me say that high quality assessment should be leading the way in education. It seems like a reasonable idea: Start with the outcomes in the forefront and then build rearward. It’s like building a house, you have the blueprint and architect’s rendering and each step in construction leads towards this final vision. But, instead, in education we act as if we’re taking a trip to Home Depot to buy a tool because something in the house needs to be fixed. If we’re not sure what tool to get, it’s easy to buy the wrong one.

In education assessment has been confused with standardized testing and now standardized testing is leading the cart rather than following best practices in teaching and learning. It’s also contracting the array of college and career readiness skills and knowledge that students need.

Perhaps what I should have been saying is that while standards and targets are a starting point, there’s more complexity in getting to the ending point. Students need to explicitly know the success criteria and the strategies for reaching them. Through formative feedback students get the support they need to be successful.

Assessments should consider growth in learning that takes place from the starting line to the final test. The idea that every child will be 100% proficient at reaching every target is not sustainable. It’s like saying that every person in this country will earn enough to buy a Tesla Model S or be a quantum physicist. It’s a beautiful theory but an unrealistic policy. Quality assessment every day in every classroom will lead in the right direction. Lockstep annual tests will not assure that every student will graduate prepared for this increasingly complex world.

Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Degrees of Knowledge

In a recent conversation with some educational folks the question came up of redirecting instructional targets from Bloom’s Taxonomy to Webb’s Degrees of Knowledge. After considering the pros and cons of using one or the other, it was decided that they in fact, complement each other. I embraced this idea ad immediately begin to think about how to assess these complex outcomes.

Benjamin Bloom’ taxonomy is a sequence of learning outcomes from simple recall and understanding through layers of application, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and creating.

Norman Webb’s Degrees of Knowledge explains 4 levels of knowledge: Recall, Skills, Strategic Thinking, and Extended Learning.

The two become complementary in relation to creativity that is at the top of Bloom’s pyramid. In Webb’s model, a student would define creativity at the recall level, find examples of creativity in the world at the skills level, explain and demonstrate how creativity has improved the world at the Strategic Thinking level, and create a new way to recycle or design for a purpose in the Extended Learning.

The greater challenge lies in assessing these. The first skill level may use the Common Core Language Arts vocabulary building standard. The second may use a peer review checklist for comparing the findings to the quality indicators of creativity, the third may combine an ELA writing standards with a presentation rubric, and the third may return to the quality indicators of creativity with a self, peer and teacher assessment rubric.

What do you think of this idea? Do you have any examples to add?