The Standards Based Education System - 1823 Words

The thirty-odd-year push to create a standards-based education system in the United States has seen teacher preparation programs and classroom teachers strive to make sense of national, state, and local standards and how best to address those standards in the classroom. As many researchers have noted (Guskey, 2005; Gullickson 2005; DeLuca 2012; McMillan, 2013; Bonner, 2013; and Brookhart, 2011 2013), classroom teachers are increasingly required to be data driven in their instruction and fluent in the language necessary to develop and administer valid and reliable classroom assessments. At the same time, the very definition of assessment continues to evolve to incorporate not only the summative tests that have been a cornerstone of†¦show more content†¦These presenters went on to propose that test blueprints can help â€Å"define the parameters of an assessment, review assessment alignment to learning expectations, instruction, and cognitive complexity† (Lavender and Shaw, 2013). Unlike the blueprints used for large-scale tests, the example given by Lavender and Shaw afford teachers an easily accessible concept to follow to ensure that their assessments cover not only the learning targets but also how learning targets are being assessed and at what cognitive level. In this way, teachers can make sure that their assessments are reliable, valid and fair. These presenters also suggested that once the road map is created, it could be used to communicate assessment goals with students and other stakeholders (Lavender and Shaw, 2013). When creating classroom assessments, Thomas Guskey (2005) suggested that â€Å"teachers need to do two important things: (1) translate the standards into specific classroom experiences and (2) ensure that classroom assessments effectively measure that learning† (Guskey, 2005, p. 32). In other words, teachers must learn now to â€Å"unpack† standards so as to better link them to what is happening in the classroom (Guskey, 2005, p.