Assessment

At Flat Rock Community Schools we believe in a balanced assessment system.  A balanced assessment system consists of summative, formative and interim assessments.  All of these assessments have their own distinct instructional purpose. This fact does not overshadow that each also have their limitations.

Summative assessments are those that are administered at the end of a unit,  semester, or year. These are used to allow students to demonstrate what content they know for mastery.  Large Scale summative assessments are useful in ranking and comparing schools, districts or programs and the disaggregated data can be used to determine subgroup anomalies.  They can help schools adjust instructional programming for the future. However these assessments are not useful in determining the current needs of the students.

Formative assessments are administered frequently in the classroom, and do allow the teacher and students to determine current needs and adjustments in instruction.  Used effectively, formative assessment leads to improved learning. These types of assessments take many forms. It could be observational data, thumbs up thumbs down, red light- green light, or through instructional technology.  Anything that provides feedback to the teacher and student about where they are at any given moment with the lesson.

Interim assessments fall in between both of the previous types mentioned.  They do so in both timing and purpose. These types of assessments allow teachers to evaluate student progress on common content standards or benchmarks, and to make sure that they are progressing toward mastery for end of the year learning goals.  Unlike summative assessments these take place in time for teachers to adjust instruction and to address any identified gaps in student mastery.

At Flat Rock Community Schools we understand that a variety of measures are needed to accommodate a variety of goals. The School District has undertaken the challenge and is designing a balanced assessment system using the strengths of summative, interim, and formative assessments to address instructional, accountability, and learning needs.

M-Step/SAT-  Large Scale Summative Assessment

NWEA/PSAT- Interim Assessments

DIBELS

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills.

DIBELS are comprised of seven measures to function as indicators of phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, accuracy and fluency with connected text, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. DIBELS were designed for use in identifying children experiencing difficulty in acquisition of basic early literacy skills in order to provide support early and prevent the occurrence of later reading difficulties.

DRA

DRA2 enables primary teachers to systematically observe, record, and evaluate changes in
student reading performance. DRA2 provides teachers with information that helps teachers
determine each student’s independent reading level and identify what the student needs to
learn next.

The DRA Word Analysis is a diagnostic assessment that provides classroom and reading
teachers with a systematic means to observe how struggling and emerging readers attend
to and work with the various components of spoken and written words. It is intended to
support teachers to:

1. Determine students’ level of control of various word analysis tasks.
2. Document students’ progress over time.
3. Group students according to their instructional needs.
4. Plan more effectively for instruction.