Simplifying Common Assessment: A Guide for Professional Learning Communities at Work (How Teachers Can Develop Effective and Efficient Assessments)

Built on the process featured in Common Formative Assessment: A Toolkit for PLCs at Work, this book demonstrates how educators can develop effective and efficient assessments. The authors simplify assessment development to give teacher teams the confidence to write and use team-designed common formative assessments that help ensure all students master essential skills and concepts.

Benefits:

• Gain strategies for how to identify and unwrap power standards to use as the basis for learning targets and common formative assessments.
• Use protocols and reproducibles to facilitate the formative assessment process.
• Get tools to create pacing guides and to design units for conducting and responding to assessments.
• Explore ideas on how to encourage students to become actively involved in the assessment process.

Contents:
Introduction: Framing the Power of Assessment in Professional Learning Communities
Chapter 1: Clarifying Assessment Types and Uses
Chapter 2: Starting With the End in Mind
Chapter 3: Considering Rigor and Complexity
Chapter 4: Intentionally Planning Instruction and Assessment
Chapter 5: Creating Questions, Tasks, and Tools That Work
Chapter 6: Using Data to Support Student Learning
Chapter 7: Focusing on Feedback and Grappling With Grading
Chapter 8: Using Common Assessments With Singleton Teachers
Appendix: Using a Road Map to Implement Common Assessments

Kim Bailey is former director of professional development and instructional support for the Capistrano Unified School District in California. Her leadership was instrumental in uniting and guiding educators throughout the district's 58 schools on their journey to becoming professional learning communities. She also taught courses in educational leadership as an adjunct faculty member at Chapman University in California. Prior to her work in professional development, Kim served as an administrator of special education programs and a teacher of students with disabilities.

Kim's education background spans 38 years, and her work at Capistrano has won national praise. The National School Boards Association (NSBA) recognized Kim's leadership in coordinating and implementing the district's Professional Development Academies. The academies received the distinguished NSBA Magna Award and the California School Boards Association Golden Bell Award. Kim has served on the Committee on Accreditation for the California Commission on Teaching Credentialing.

As a writer and consultant, Kim works with educators nationwide to build effective leadership of PLCs. She is passionate about empowering teams with practical, collaborative strategies for aligning instruction, assessment, and interventions with the standards so that all students receive high-quality instruction.

Kim earned a bachelor of science and a master of science in education and special education from Northern Illinois University.

Chris Jakicic, EdD, served as principal of Woodlawn Middle School in Illinois from its opening day in 1999 through the spring of 2007. Under her leadership, the staff shifted toward a collaborative culture focused on learning and implemented formative assessment practices to shape their instructional strategies. Student motivation and performance increased. Dr. Jakicic began her career teaching middle school science before serving as principal of Willow Grove Elementary School in Illinois for nine years. At Willow Grove, she helped teachers develop high-performing collaborative teams to increase student learning.

Through her work with teachers and administrators across the country, Dr. Jakicic emphasizes that effective teaming is the heart of PLCs. She also shares practical knowledge about how to use data conversations to interpret classroom information for effective instruction. Woodlawn is one of the schools featured on allthingsplc.info.

Dr. Jakicic has worked closely with schools and districts that want to use the power of common formative assessments to increase learning for all students. She provides specific, practical strategies for teams who want to make the best use of their limited common planning time to write effective assessments at the rigor of the Common Core State Standards. Teams can use the data from these assessments to effectively provide students with exactly what they need next.

Dr. Jakicic has written articles for the Journal of Staff Development and Illinois School Research and Development Journal detailing her experiences with common assessments and PLCs. She has worked as an adjunct instructor at National-Louis University as well as Loyola University Chicago, where she earned a doctor of education.