Assessment (the learned/assessed curriculum)

Teachers need ongoing information regarding student progress to enable them to adjust their instructional plans to best meet the needs of students. Parents need to know how well their child is moving toward mastery of the standards and specific indicators for that grade level. Principals and central office administrators need to know how classes and entire schools are progressing.

To provide such information, ongoing assessment measures will be developed and field-tested over the next two years. Some assessments will be in the form of quarterly and unit assessments. Assessment items will be developed so that teachers can use them on a daily or weekly basis as needed. In addition, teachers will use assignments specifically keyed to the MCPS Curriculum Framework indicators to monitor student progress. The format for the assessment measures developed by the school system will be a balance of performance assessment items, brief response items, and selected response items. Curriculum units adopted or developed will have formative assessment measures written into or added to the text of the units (e.g., Grade 3 social studies units already developed). The local assessments will be linked to the state assessment program so that teachers can measure student progress toward mastery on the state tests.

Local assessment measures will be field tested and checked for validity and reliability during the 2001 – 2002 school year and will be ready for formal use the following year.

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