Yesterday our Head of School lead an Understanding By Design (UBD) workshop for the middle school faculty. When discussing the assessment process, she stressed the need to create assessments that:
- Reveal deep and important understandings
- Core Performance Assessment
- Provide information about what students know about the topic
- Short answer quizzes and tests, guided response, timelines, self-assessments, products in response to prompts
- Provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate the skills relative to the topic
- Public performance, documenting of performance, formal observations or interviews
While the first two points are easy to embrace, the third is a bit more challenging. Assessments that measure skills can be difficult to design and time consuming to implement. Consequently, these types of assessments are frequently missing in the typical classroom, and ultimately that disadvantages our students.
The Need for 21st Century Skills
Although the UBD session referred to “skills” in the general sense, it should not be a stretch to assume that skills today also include what have been termed “21st century skills.” We have addressed that concept before and are currently in the process of defining/refining what constitutes a contemporary educational skillset. While the definition of 21st century skills is somewhat ambiguous, the need to equip students for the challenges of the digital age is unequivocal.
Whether it’s testing data from TIMSS or PISA, writings from Tony Wagner, Thomas Friedman, or Daniel Pink, or observations from within our own profession, all signs indicate that (1) a strong foundation in basic skills is no longer sufficient and (2) we are falling behind other countries in addressing the issue. Our hesitation to change our practice can partly be explained by the difficulty in measuring these skills. Difficult, however, does not mean impossible.
Measuring Skills for the 21st Century
This week Education Sector’s Elena Silva published Measuring Skills for the 21st Century. Silva’s work provides a good overview of the need to teach complex thinking skills, examines several models for articulating 21st century skills, and explores new assessments that can provide students those much-needed opportunities to “demonstrate the skills relative to the topic.” As Silva states in her report:
“New assessments … illustrate that the skills that really matter for the 21st century—the ability to think creatively and to evaluate and analyze information—can be measured accurately and in a common and comparable way. These emergent models also demonstrate the potential to measure these complex thinking skills at the same time that we measure a student’s mastery of core content or basic skills and knowledge. There is, then, no need for more tests to measure advanced skills. Rather, there is a need for better tests that measure more of the skills students’ need to succeed today.”
In light of our work with UBD and on-going conversations regarding curriculum and instruction, I would highly encourage you to read the full text of Silva’s article and visit the Discussion Forum for more information. With time, patience, effort and understanding we can meet our students’ needs, both immediate and long term.