The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development has teamed up with the defense contractor and technology company Northrop Grumman and the Fairfax County, Va., school district to build an online tool for schools to conduct formative assessments.
Formative assessments鈥攚hich are administered throughout a school year to help teachers modify and improve instruction based on results鈥攁re attracting an increasing amount of interest among school districts and educators. (鈥淐hiefs to Focus on Formative Assessments,鈥� July 12, 2006.)
The new formative-assessment tool, called Aspire, is different from other formative-assessment products because of its professional-development component, its makers say.
鈥淥ther products seem to forget that instruction is the biggest piece of student learning,鈥� said Ann Cunningham-Morris, the director of professional development for the Alexandria, Va.-based ASCD. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where I think we鈥檙e meeting a need that hasn鈥檛 already been met. We鈥檙e supporting a practice that impacts real student learning.鈥�
According to the ASCD, administrators in the 164,000-student Fairfax County, Va., schools were frustrated with their current formative-assessment package, and enlisted the aid of Northrop Grumman to develop new online-assessment material.
Teacher Skills
A major need for the district was a tool that tied professional development into the program. Ms. Cunningham-Morris said the ASCD 鈥減rovided a bridge鈥� between the Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman鈥檚 technology platform and the county district鈥檚 assessment needs.
Aspire includes typical test-generation software and banks of questions while allowing educators to create their own questions. It displays data in different forms and at the student, school, or district level. After teachers view their students鈥� performance, they can access professional-development tools that address the specific skills they need to emphasize.
鈥淎ssessment should be the beginning of a conversation [about student learning], not the end of it,鈥� Ms. Cunningham-Morris said.
Aspire is in the pilot stage in Fairfax County.
Scott Marion, the associate director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, based in Dover, N.H., cautions, meanwhile, against overuse of the term 鈥渇ormative assessment.鈥�
While he is unfamiliar with Aspire, he said that the term has become something of a buzzword for any company selling assessment-related tools.
Sometimes, he said, the focus of those tools is not in the right areas.
鈥淵ou hear schools saying, 鈥榃e need to figure out how to improve our test scores,鈥� 鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 hear, 鈥榃e need to improve student learning.鈥� 鈥�
