Educational Reform has made major impacts within education within the past 20 years.
But not until recently has the impacts driven the way we evaluate student achievement and success. There have been several major players who have helped this movement, such as KDE, Gates Foundation, and ARI. Teachers no longer are waiting on state test results, they are making changes to their curriculum daily by using multiple forms of assessment that are driven by data and research. Teachers are using new forms of assessment in their classroom like: no longer is assessment driven by test and quiz data, but now we are using more formative assessments like QFT, Technology to individualize the needs of the individual, summative assessments that use the diagnostic data to help build RTI activities, but it’s so much more than that. Teachers are designing the assessments that have meaning to their students. Being the ARI Innovation Coordinator at our school, I get to work with a lot of great teachers and students. One of our special needs staff recently received an ARI Grant to work with her students on developing life skills that focused on Food Preparation. This is a skill that every student needs to have before they leave home. So what assessment strategies did she use? Well, first the student had to not only prepare a meal and during the preparation we video taped her and together we create a cooking video which is an example of performance assessment. Taking even further we did a student Interviews where through questioning we did a student oral assessment. I will place the links to the videos in the next posts.