Teachers will be expected to be far more assessment literate in the future than they are today or have been in the past. Virtually every set of standards of teacher competence developed recently holds the expectation that teachers will be competent in assessment.

This trend aligns requirements for the teaching profession with what we have long known to be the reality of assessment life in classrooms. Teachers can spend a third of their professional time or more involved in assessment related activities (Herman & Dorr-Bremme, 1982; Crooks, 1988; and Stiggins & Conklin, 1992). An appropriate level of assessment competence is required to do this job well. These new standards of professional excellence place significant new pressure on colleges of education to prepare their graduates to be assessment literate-a challenge they have long failed to meet (Noll, 1955; Roeder, 1972; Gullickson, 1984; Shafer & Lissitz, 1987; and Stiggins & Conklin, 1992).

Until higher education responds to this demand, local school district staff development professionals will continue to face the challenge of filling this long-standing gap in assessment literacy.

Assessment Literacy Defined
Teachers and administrators who are assessment literate understand the difference between sound and unsound assessment, evaluation and communication practices. Those who are assessment literate:

• understand what assessment methods to use in order to gather dependable information about student achievement
• communicate assessment results effectively, whether using report card grades, test scores, portfolios or conferences
• understand how to use assessment to maximize student motivation and learning by involving students as full partners in assessment, record keeping and communication

"Teachers will be expected to be far more
assessment literate in the future than they
are today or have been in the past."

What Teachers Need to Know
Professional development in classroom assessment must build a deep understanding of the difference between sound and unsound assessment and a complete understanding of how to use assessment as a teaching tool. This translates into the following six classroom assessment competencies for educators (Stiggins, 2001).

First, they must understand the full range of users and uses of assessment. Users are found in the classroom, in instructional support roles and in the ranks of policy makers. Different users in different contexts need different information about student achievement in different forms and at different times to do their jobs. No single assessment can meet everyone's needs. Assessment literate educators understand and appreciate those differences.

Second, educators must be crystal clear about the achievement targets that they want their students to hit. Different forms of achievement (i.e., mastery of content knowledge, reasoning proficiency, performance skills and product creation proficiencies) require the application of different modes of assessment. Assessment literates know that the first question they must answer is, "What do I want to assess?" Only with that answer in mind can they determine how best to assess it.

Third, they must be prepared to use the full range of assessments to track student achievement, including selected response, essay, performance, and personal communication-based assessment formats. Teachers must know how to select an appropriate assessment method for their particular context and understand when to use it and why it fits best.

Fourth, they must understand how to assemble the exercises of whatever method they choose in order to sample student performance effectively and efficiently. Assessment literates can gather just enough evidence of student achievement to lead them to a confident conclusion without wasting time gathering too much.

Fifth, they understand the sources of bias that can creep into each assessment and they know what specific actions to take to prevent those potential problems from distorting their assessment results.

And finally, assessment literate teachers understand the relationship between assessment and student motivation. They know how to bring students into the processes of assessment and communicating results, thus turning these into confidence-building instructional interventions. They understand that this kind of deep student involvement greatly boosts the chances of student success.

Professional Development Options
What kinds of adult learning environments and experiences are most likely to help teachers and administrators learn to design, develop, and implement quality classroom assessments in these terms? Whatever approach(es) we use must meet certain standards of excellence in professional development practice. To be specific, they must provide:

• an infusion of new ideas regarding effective assessment practices-specific things competent assessors need to know and do to maximize the quality and impact of their classroom assessment
• opportunities to practice applying the principles of sound assessment, providing teachers with the chance to make newly-acquired assessment ideas and strategies come alive in their own classrooms
• assessment tactics that deliver concrete benefits almost immediately to teachers and their students so as to provide positive motivation to continue learning
• ways for educators to take responsibility for their own training-honouring their professionalism in the pursuit of excellence in assessment
• flexibility to adjust to various learning styles, training schedules, and paces of professional development
• opportunities for collaborative learning and collegial support groups, because adults learn most effectively when indivi-duals share the lessons they have learned (support groups that include both teachers and administrators can be important here)
• efficiency of training, minimizing the amount of time and energy practitioners must invest to derive maximum benefit, because resources for professional development will always be thin

• take time to read about and reflect upon new assessment ideas
• shape them into applications that make sense in our personal classrooms
• experiment with those applications, trying strategies, observing effects, interacting with students and drawing inferences about what works and what doesn't
• collect our thoughts, reactions and conclusions into some summary form to share with the learning team at the next meeting

"Expert consultants can help in planning
instructionally relevant assessment systems.
But they cannot take the journey
to assessment literacy for us."

Assessment Literacy Training
To begin with, the value of being assessment literate must be fixed in the minds of all educators. Then, interested teachers and administrators must be given the resources and opportunity for teachers and administrators to independently, and as a group, become assessment literate. To stimulate interest within faculty and staff, a leadership group might offer an overview workshop on the importance of high-quality classroom assessment. The Assessment Training Institute's free district assessment planning guide, entitled Leadership for Excellence in Assessment can help with this. Any experienced staff development specialist can lead this self-evaluation using these materials with little advanced preparation. This kind of introductory session might culminate with the announcement that classroom assessment learning teams or study groups will be formed for all interested teachers and administrators.

Organizing Learning Teams - Within any district, learning teams can be configured in any of a variety of ways. Groups might be formed from among faculty members and administrators within one building, formed on the basis of grade level (within or across levels) or discipline (math, science, arts, etc.). Principals and vice-principals from various buildings might assemble to create a team for preparing to provide building-level leadership in this arena. Learning teams might come into existence as opportunities arise-for example, when an ad hoc committee is assembled to evaluate and consider revising a report card or when a curriculum-development team decides to deal with some underlying assessment issues. Participants might work together only for the period of time needed to complete their study. But all such instances represent opportunities for learning. Some school districts have found it prudent to also set up a "leadership study team" comprising a few key teachers and administrators from across the organization.

Other districts have issued the invitation to team up and ask those who are interested to form teams as they wish. They encourage teams to form and start at their convenience, pacing their work in a manner consistent with the schedules of team members. The flexibility of this professional development process is clear. In any case, as members complete an initial learning team experience, they can then fan out and lead a team effort involving others. Then, those participants might do the same, and so on, building a professional development pyramid. As time passes, those not involved at the outset will begin to see others around them managing assessment with renewed confidence. This will motivate them to learn valuable assessment lessons.

Specifics About Team Work - One excellent way to start is to make the first focus of learning team study to be a basic assessment text, such as Student-Involved Classroom Assessment (Stiggins, 2001). When this foundation is in place, specific discipline-based applications then become high priorities. But whatever the topic or reference the team decides to centre on, team members must understand from the start that these are not merely books to be read and discussed. A learning team is not a book club. Rather, these are books to be read, reflected upon, worked through, experimented with, discussed, and culled for ideas that work in each teacher's individual classroom learning environment. They contain no prescriptions, only possibilities from which teachers choose-pieces of clay to be molded to fit each individual teacher's needs. This is why we recommend such a heavy allocation of time to individual study, classroom experimentation, and reflection between learning team meetings. Team meetings are times for sharing lessons learned in the classroom assessment process; not merely lessons learned from reading the book. It is a time to share successes, to discuss those strategies that worked and why. It also is a time to share difficulties team members may have experienced, to figure out why problems came up, and to find solutions.

Motivating Participation in Learning Teams - The learning team method of professional development takes advantage of four factors that can encourage participation. It offers:

1. Individual study for participants who have an interest in experimenting on their own (with minimum risk of embarrassment if things go wrong);
2. Collaborative study for those who like to work together to share experiences and lessons learned;
3. Training when members feel it is an appropriate part of their overall professional development plan; and
4. Time to concentrate on one important topic long enough to internalize some new and useful ideas.

"My recommended strategy relies even
more heavily on individual study."

For many educators, the promise of these four factors will be incentive enough to encourage their participation. But for those who need additional incentive, the district might provide release time or extended contract time to permit teachers to participate in these efforts. Another option includes establishing an ongoing working relationship with a higher education institution to offer graduate credit. It has been our experience at the Assessment Training Institute that colleges of education are most willing to enter into productive working relationships with districts to make such an offering possible.

A Final Thought
One need only contemplate the dangers to students of the inaccurate day-to-day classroom assessment of their achievement to understand how critical assessment literacy is to the effective functioning of schools. If we mismeasure achievement, we might fail to identify important learner needs, group students inappropriately, place faith in instructional strategies that really don't work, assign inaccurate grades, leave students with a sense of failure when they really succeeded, or leave students feeling successful when they really failed. In short, we place students directly in harm's way. Yet, even in the year 2000, we cannot assure our students and their families that we accurately assess achievement.

We have yet to invest the assessment resources needed to build an assessment literate school culture. We know what teachers need to know to function effectively as classroom assessors, and we know how to help them become assessment literate. We have very flexible and efficient professional development options available to us. Teachers just need the opportunity to team up and learn.

Note:
This article has been excerpted from "Learning Teams for Assessment Literacy" published by the Assessment Training Institute in Portland, Oregon. Direct inquiries to the Assessment Training Institute: 50 SW 2nd Ave., Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97204, U.S. 1 (800) 480-3060 or ati@assessmentinst.com