Assessment and Data Puppies

Assessment and Data Puppies

I attended an assessment literacy session put on my by the Colorado Department of Education. Among other things, it let me dive into my beliefs about the role of assessment and data in Aurora Public Schools. This was further informed by a colleague’s note about unsubscribing from Standardized Testing. It made me think that we might need a different frame for how we consider assessment and data. Fortunately, in this session there was an opportunity to do just that.

We were asked to choose a metaphor for how we see might see assessment. The choices were: beach ball, puppy, microscope, and clipboard. I chose puppy. Below is the result. On the left of the page are the benefits of assessment puppies. The right represents the struggle with our assessment puppies.

I share this with you all to encourage you to think in different ways about pillars of instruction (i.e., assessment, content, etc.). What metaphor is most apt for re-considering long standing issues or concepts in Education?

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