Giving Compass' Take:

• Katy Escandell and Dr. Lisa Goodnow share lessons they learned leading a district team at Austin ISD through the first two years of formative assessment.

• How can other districts learn from this effort? What could a program like this look like in your community? 

• Learn about a pilot program helping refugees graduate. 

For the last two years, we have been leading a district team here at Austin ISD that has worked with four of our schools to pilot an initiative focused on developing a deep practice of formative assessment. The initiative, titled How I Know and supported by a partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, has been an experience that has deepened our understanding both of how to effectively pilot initiatives like this and of the impact that formative assessment can have on student learning and classroom culture.

When we joined the initiative (along with Dallas ISD and Tulsa Public Schools), we knew that we wanted to be actively encouraging the practice of formative assessment in our schools. We thought this would be a great way to study how formative assessment works on both a practical and conceptual level and how to scale it.

Our two years working on the initiative have proven to us that the changes that can occur within a formative assessment culture have not been oversold. Students truly do become more engaged, more self-directed, and more aware of (and confident in addressing) their own growth areas. Our teachers and team have been featured in a number of pieces, exploring topics such as how our focus on SEL naturally aligned with formative assessment and how a field trip to an exemplar district helped our team deepen their understanding of formative assessment practices.

Looking back, we ended up learning even more than we had anticipated, and we’re excited to be at a point of reflection where we can share our learnings with the field.

Upon reflection, we have learned three key lessons that we think are worth sharing:

  1. Go deep. There can be significant overlap between formative assessment and other pieces, but you need to go deep with formative assessment to realize its full promises.
  2. Get buy-in. Make sure teachers have bought in, make sure they’re supported by their school leaders, and make time for them to get into each others’ classrooms.
  3. Develop the mindset. It’s important that everyone go into the work with a design-thinking mindset, ready to learn and iterate with one another–having a question, trying an answer, and then pivoting away to get deeper.

Read the full article about two years of piloting formative assessment by Katy Escandell and Dr. Lisa Goodnow at Getting Smart.