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Episode Summary:

Are your teachers’ math assessments helping students grow as learners or are they hindering student achievement? 

In this episode, Jon Orr and Yvette Lehman dive into the role of assessment in math education and how a shift in assessment practices can create a classroom culture that values growth and understanding. Hear real insights from their work with district leaders to transform summative assessments into powerful tools for student growth.

1. Discover practical ways to make assessments opportunities for reflection and improvement, even for summative assessments.
2. Learn how to build a math classroom culture where assessments foster self-awareness and ownership over learning.
3. Gain strategies for implementing moderated marking and community practices that create alignment and elevate teaching practices.

Listen to this episode now to reshape your assessment approach and support lasting student growth in math!

Resources:

• Register for the Make Math Moments Virtual Summit
• Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

Attention District Math Leaders:

Assessment for Growth – A Complete Online Course for Assessment in Mathematics

Not sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ 

Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com 

Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jon Orr: Okay, let’s let’s jump into this conversation, because this this conversation is all it’s getting. It’s getting us fired up. You know, we had to we had to flip the mikes on and we had to we had to dive into this because I think the community of leaders matter. Educators need to hear this conversation. But also I think we want to share it.

We want to share with the conversation. So this remind everybody, like we this came from a conversation you had recently with some of the leaders that we talked to on a regular basis, you know, daily, weekly we speak with leaders who are thinking about, you know, in changing their their mathematics programs and strengthening support for teachers. And oftentimes we are see guiding that process, but also supporting that process along the way. So give us the lowdown. What do we talk about here? But everybody doesn’t know. We’re talking about assessment because that was in the in the introduction. 

Yvette Lehman: So, yes, I had a chance to meet with one of our dynamic leaders recently, and we were doing some planning for an upcoming professional development session. And the big message, the big takeaway from that session that she was trying to share was that all assessment should be an opportunity for growth, including and the focus for this particular PD was around summative assessment and that really resonated with me as such an important and critical shift that could be replicated elsewhere.

Just that simple idea that if we are not leveraging even year end, semester, end this big summit of assessments as an opportunity for students to become better mathematicians, then we are missing a huge opportunity.

Jon Orr: Yeah. Like I. I remember and myself a long time ago, like, before I made the assessment journey and switched, you know, the way I was thinking about assessments in assessment for student growth.

Was that very typical? I think this is happening. If you look across your schools, you look across your teachers like assessment practices have not changed, you know, generally. So when you think about the general, you know, wide spread of your of your teachers, you’re probably seeing similar things where we’re just having regular tests. Those tests get marked, they put in the mark book, the average of the marks get tabulated and boom, there’s your mark.

And and I used to do that like I used to assess that way. And and it wasn’t until I started shifting practice that started to make me go like, wait a minute, I need to like, I’m learning so much from my students around what they’re doing in the classroom. And then it was sometimes it wasn’t matching up what was on, say, the test.

And then that was a conflict to me. For me, right there was like I was like, okay, I just worked with this student throughout this week on these topics and I’ve seen repeated times where they demonstrated, you know, at at expectations for that particular learning goal or that particular, you know, standard. But then when it came to the test, it was like something something wasn’t there. Right?

And it was like, wait a minute, but I know this. Like, but then I have to give them this mark. And it was a conflict here. And then it made me go like, Well, why am I wait? Like, why am I waiting that way more than this? And it was it was a process we have to go through saying like, what is the purpose of the mark that I’m putting down here is the purpose is, is to record what they know consistently or what they know now or what they know.

Again, that moment, like it’s it’s it’s something that I think every teacher has to really think about is like, what is the purpose of the assessment that they’re making? And you’re saying like this this session that one of our leaders was planning was like, we need to make these teachers aware of this. Like, how are you using assessment for growth, for learning purposes and not just say, assessment of learning and putting in this thing and that we’re not even going to like look at that number again. So what’s what are your thoughts like give me some more thoughts here. Like where where do you want? Where do you want, you know, the listener right now to take home around assessment? 

Yvette Lehman: I think there are two big ideas that emerged from my conversation with this leader. These are my moments. The first one is that if students don’t, you know, they’re handed back the assessment and has a number written on the top and maybe they know their grade or their percentage, but if they can’t clearly articulate what they did well and what their next step is like, that is a huge miss for us, because if we look, of course at like John, how this work around effect size, like the number one effect size is self grading because that means that students have ownership over their learning. They’re the ones in the pilot seat. They’re the ones who are, you know, internalizing the learning that’s happening and they own the learning goals. So if they can’t, you know, I have this with my own son where he comes home with a test and it has a score on it.

And I say, well, you know, so what what did you need to improve on? What could you have done differently? And if he can’t articulate that and that assessment really isn’t putting him in the pilot’s seat of his own learning journey, this assessment isn’t something that should be done to students. It is something that should be done with students to support them in understanding where they are relative to the learning objectives.

I think you also brought up the other point that we wanted to really confirm is that like we, you and I, both are like, we don’t have anything against unit tests. Like there is a time and a place where we’re comfortable with kids sitting down and showing us what they know through product, but we also have to validate that result.

So to your point, if I’ve seen a student engaging with the mathematics routinely over the course of the last month and then on the day of the exam, you know, they make a mistake, they perform poorly, Does that discount everything else that I’ve seen them do up until that point? 

Jon Orr: Yeah. And and I think that’s that’s what we need to kind of wrap our minds around as educators, as leaders of other educators, is is how how much do we trust our professional judgment? You know, and I think, you know, what I was saying before about the way I shifted and I and I said that I shifted my assessment practices because I had shifted my instructional practices. And when I did that, I got chances and opportunities to observe student learning that I was not having before. Like my my structure of like, hey, here’s the examples, here’s the homework, go ahead and have at it.

And only the students that say came to my desk because I would literally go sit down at the desk and then they would come to me and with the questions and I would answer those questions. I only saw kids when they brought me questions, and that was it. Like I didn’t get to interact with students. So when you shipped that instruction, all of a sudden you’re interacting with students, you learn so much more.

But when you start learning so much more, this is where that that kind of like conflict came up. But, you know, I think I think where I want to make a point about about those experiences is that you gain is that so much so much of our biases are in that test that unit test or those quizzes that that we don’t trust our own professional judgment, our own experience that we have with those students, Like when I when I would have say that, like I know that they are witnessed this, but I can’t give it to them because they didn’t say do it on the test.

It’s like, well, like we’re professionals. We’ve we’ve been say let’s say you’ve been teaching for a number of years. You’re not like a rookie teacher here. Maybe you’re a professional, you are actually getting paid to, you know, give your professional opinion around student learning. And we would say like, I got out and just wait for this test to show up, right?

Like, we have to give ourselves more credit that we have. We have good instincts. We have a great like understanding of where students are on their, say, learning journey. And if we if we don’t, we should, because we can trust our professional judgment at that point that say like, okay, I’ve seen I’ve seen these expectations come in or I’ve seen or I’ve witnessed, I’m seeing a consistent, consistent action on that particular learning outcome.

And when I get to the a unit test, that should just confirm what I already know, right? It has to just kind of go like, this is the thing I already knew. Great. All right. Another piece of evidence that I can I can file away that says, yep, one more piece of evidence that says exactly what I know already.

And when it doesn’t match up, we can. You have to be able to trust your professional judgment that says like, no, this isn’t this isn’t the waiting that I need to give it, because I have to trust that they have this, this, this they’ve demonstrated this consistently. We have to get more weighting to that component. Our observations are conversations with students more.

They’re not necessarily more than the product, but it has to be a component of it. And we have to trust ourselves that we know what we’re doing. We know that we know where students are on on, on their say these these learning outcomes so that we can change that mark or put a different grade down for that particular learning goal or that particular, let’s say, unit test that covers standards.

Like that’s that’s an important component of like being able to say like professional judgment matters. And you probably have teachers who are still not trusting themselves that that matters.

Yvette Lehman: For sure. And so as leaders, why does work around assessment make a difference? Like it’s like if we’re gonna we only have so much time and energy to target one area. The reason I think maybe assessment you know for some might be at the right fit is because assessment tells us a lot about what we value in mathematics. So at the end of the day, if we make all these changes to our practice, but then our assessment is still, you know, prioritizing speed or it’s prioritizing the correct answer only or, you know, then that tells kids what mathematics is. It kind of shapes their experience as a mathematician in school. So every time well spent. 

Jon Orr: Right, Right. It’s like it’s like you can you can, you know, have your students you can you can tell your students all day long that you value their thinking. But then if you don’t actually, like, consider their thinking in their assessment. And when you report those assessments, you’re telling them exactly what you value and then you’re not shaping the culture of your classroom.

You’re not you’re not actually proving it to them because they will start. They will kids are going to quickly learn. They’ll be like, it only matters on the test or on the quiz or on the assignment. And it actually like and then you get students saying, like, does this count for grades? You know, like how many teachers how many times have we heard that from students instead of saying like, you know what, Everything counts.

Everything. Everything counts. Because when I see it or when I help you or it, it adds to my my understanding of where you are on the learning journey. And that matters because my number that I’m going to put down for that particular learning, learning outcome if I need to put down a number, is going to be representative of what I know about you and where you are on that learning goal at that moment.

Like that’s what the number is supposed to mean. So make sure that you’re, you know, taking into account multiple forms of evidence and also trusting that that professional judgment we have. So let’s let’s pivot here because we were talking with our leader, you know, our are our great, you know, leader who was planning the session when you’re help planning that particular session for them.

And I think when we’re planning professional development or restructuring the support we want to give teachers and we want to focus on assessment because focusing on assessment matters and it could be like your what could be one of your priorities or your objectives for the year to say like, you know what, I need to shift I need to shift the assessment practices here in the school or here in this district, because if we shift the assessment practices, we can start to shift instructional practices and that’s going to all of a sudden change the way students are behaving around mathematics and understanding mathematics and also believing their mathematicians.

So if we make a point to say we want to shift your assessment practices, how do we do it? Like how do like we’ve been probably saying like, yes, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, like the people listening to a math podcast around teaching probably don’t need to be told exactly that. That’s an important component of the work that they need to do. If they decide that that’s the most important component of the work that they’re going to do this year. Like what are we going to do to like, move the needle? What do you think about?

Yvette Lehman: We were actually talking earlier, John, about just some structures that have actually worked for us in the past and things as simple as moderated marking or coming together as a grade level or division to look at a common assessment and talk about how we’re going to score it and what we’re going to value in student responses.

So creating communities of practice that can come together and actually challenge one another, you know, help us see things maybe differently. Sometimes when we’re writing an assessment or administering an assessment, we are looking for one answer or one way of responding to that question. But by actually doing the assessment ahead of time with colleagues and even just in that practice of actually like actually completing the assessment yourself before your students do with others, you’re likely going to realize that there are multiple ways to solve those questions and there should be.

And so that’s going to better position you to value student thinking on the assessment. Because what I’d hate to see happen is for a student to actually answer something beautifully, and it was a tremendous amount of mathematical understanding, but then maybe the teacher didn’t see it that way or couldn’t see it that way. And so now they get a zero or they lose marks when in reality we need to be right.

Jon Orr: You didn’t do it my way. You didn’t do it the way that I was anticipating you to do it. And I only anticipated one way, actually. Right. And it’s not in I maybe I don’t understand that way you did, but I just don’t see that it’s the same as what I’ve done. And then they would say, Well, this is the way we did it in class, and therefore you should mimic it and follow it and not actually account for it.

So I completely agree. It’s like what you’re saying is we need to create opportunities for teachers to engage in this learning and this work. Right? It’s like it’s like if we expect if we expect to have change, what opportunities have we crafted for people to to, you know, have a different view of around what it is we’re looking for in, say, that particular standard or a group of standards or a unit like what is the main idea here?

Like what are the the overarching things that matter here when we’re say, looking at what we’re trying to report on for in this collection of standards and, you know, I think I think we want to think about how to like a lot of times where we might design, say something or show them something, but like like this is the funny thing about, say, professional development. I know that you just built a series on professional development and what that looks like. And and  I think a lot of times when we started designing like, what are how are we creating experiences? We take we take it for granted or we assume we assumes a few things. And one of the things I think we assume is that like they’re they’re adults.

They they’re not kids. And when we ask it like what we want, our teachers to be doing with our students is crafting these unique experiences for kids to, like, engage in mathematics in sheer thinking, like we’re asking them to do that, but then we maybe aren’t doing that with our educators, so we’re not crafting experiences for them to do the exact same thing that the exact same learning behaviors that we’re asking to do with students.

But we’re like now they’re adults, so they they just need to hear it and we’ll we’ll share the ideas with them. And the adults are saying, like, just share the ideas with me. You know why? Because they’re the same kids that say, like, don’t get me to think, you know, I’d rather not think today. And that’s is what adults go through.

And we start to go, okay, well, you’re right. We are not going to craft that experience. But like, you have to craft the experience for them to have the epiphany like this matters. And if we want them to, like, shift some assessment practices. Yeah, we got to put them in a situation where they’re looking at solving that problem in different ways.

Or maybe all of a sudden we have exemplars and we’re saying like, Well, what do you think about that? And what do you think about that? Like one of the most impactful professional development things I had that helped shape my assessment practices was that being involved in moderated marking where we all gave students similar, you know, the same problems from from different great or from the same grade, same from the same class.

We came together to mark them. And really what we were doing is and I don’t think I saw it at the time, but really what the facilitator was doing is like, this is for you to make sure there’s alignment amongst your department, but also so that you can see what kids are doing in different, different scenarios like different different things.

So it’s like when you market a level three or a three out of four and that teacher over there is cultivating marketing a level three over four. Like are you in alignment or are you doing looking for the same things? And then the conversation, even if you’re trying to do like checkmark marketing, the conversation will always come out, is like, well, what are we really looking for here?

Like, why did you give that a three? And I gave it a two or a one. And that conversation is the most important conversation you’re trying to craft for teachers is, is having that. Like when you craft an experience for moderate in marketing to happen, you get good results. 

Yvette Lehman: So what I heard you just say is that the person doing the talking is doing the thinking. Same as kids, right? Yeah. So when we’re for creating structures for educators to reflect on their assessment practices, to just do better by kids, you know, just to have fair assessment practices that honor student thinking and support student growth and help them see themselves as a capable and confident mathematician, then we need to create the environment where teachers are digging in and doing the work totally.

Jon Orr: And here’s another thought about and and this is a this is a thought, not necessarily about assessment. It’s just a thought about any sort of program design or, you know, adoption. You’re trying to like help teachers shift something like practice. It could be, you know, a teaching practice, a routine is people and this is true, but people in general, I think is like people in like people need to be reminded more.

They need to be taught new things. So what what I mean by that is like, you might be listening to this and said we did moderate of marketing, you know, we’ve done that before. It didn’t work right or I thought it would work or it’s like we’ve done it. But nothing took took hold and it was like, Well, you didn’t do it enough, right?

You didn’t do it enough. You didn’t remind them enough. You thought, Hey, this is going to work for this short year maybe, and then we’re going to switch focus. Is the switching of the focus is is is is a huge issue in education is you have to stick with things longer is longer than you think. So that’s why it’s like people need to be reminded about the the most important things about what we’re doing.

And that’s why choosing your like the objectives for the year, the year the five years is really important. The stick, you know, get closer to the vision of math that you want in your classrooms is because you don’t want to switch those focuses. So if you are serious about changing assessment practices in your buildings, you have to say, okay, I want to craft experiences for my educators to do moderate in marketing or come to different communities community sessions together, where they’re doing some of this thinking and talking about their own assessment practices like you have to commit to that for a long period of time if you are actually seeing or wanting to see results around that particular idea or you know, asset assessment in general is true for any any shift you’re trying to make or you have to say commit for a long time, you can’t just say like, one year and that’s it. Like you’re not going to see the results that you said it. You train them and they’re like, okay, I’m just I’m good, I’m done.

So we’ve we’ve done that. It’s like me teaching a class and saying like, I taught this to students and then the next year that, like, you never taught it to us. It’s, it’s the same idea. We have to say, if these things matter, you have to consistently embed them in everything you’re doing for a long time. It’s likely that if you did three or four sessions, you’re probably going need to do 20, 25.

You’re going to have to just keep doing it and then you’re going to see the teachers who have been resistant or the teachers who were like, I don’t understand. Or it doesn’t. I don’t I don’t get what’s happening here. They will start to kind of come along the ride because you keep talking about it. 

Yvette Lehman: So what I’m hearing, John, is that we have to make it important enough, consistent enough that it just becomes part of the culture, that this is just the way we do business. Like when I’m going to do an assessment, I get feedback from others. I plan as much common assessment as I can so that I know that we can moderate together. And it all comes back to and we say this all the time. It’s like, who is in your community? And every teacher needs a community and sometimes they emerge organically. But for those who it has not, leaders need to create the space for those communities to exist 

Jon Orr:  Totally. And you know, when you’re hearing this, you’re saying, well, if I’m going to commit a lot of time to assessment, it is like this is not going to take all my time. Like like what about all the other things? And and you have to say, yeah, like, that’s why you can’t focus on too many things. You have to focus on some things and not usually focus on too many are actually focusing on that. 

So pick the things that you think are important. Assessment is a great one because when you start focusing on assessments, so many of the things start to change and and like practices start to change, thoughts, mindsets start to change. Like assessment is a huge one for, for starting, you know, this process.

So if you all of a sudden let your foot up off the gas all you know you’re you’re not going to be say as ahead as you wanted to be. 

Yvette Lehman: And even just the simple fact of if teachers are coming together and being asked to actually do the assessment before their students and they’re engaging in mathematics together, their content knowledge is going to improve as well.

Jon Orr: Totally, totally. Like we have a district right now, one of their main focus is is on it’s not just assessment, but it is like mainly in there, like what you’re saying, it’s like they’re all kind of blended together. But the assessment is a major factor of the reason why they’re doing the say this, this session in their PLCs.

They are doing what it’s called a lesson internalization process. They are taking the curriculum resource, they’re unpacking it together in grade band groupings and walking through what are the big ideas that we want to enforce. What does it look like at the end of the unit? So they start with that assessment and go like, What are we looking for? What are the big ideas? What are the strategies? We want to travel from grade level to grade level, from from unit to unit? What are the models where we’re looking for in this particular unit? Let’s make sure we’re all comfortable around that and do some of these math to do some of these questions. So we feel comfortable around that and they do that on a regular basis. Like that’s some really impactful work that helps move the needle on assessment practices, but also moves the needle on pedagogical moves and the content knowledge. So people need to be like, you got to remind them they’ve got to do this more than this instead of new. And here’s the other thing. I was just talking with the leader just before this.

Why were you, you know, before we flipped the mic on to to record this? And we were we were talking about like why we might shift focus is is sometimes saying the same thing over and over again and working on the same things over and over again might feel boring to us. You know, it’s like all of a sudden it’s like, but I’ve said that so many times.

Like, you got to keep saying it. You got to keep it, keep doing the same things even though you might be getting bored. It’s like soon as you were like, Well, I’m if I’m bored, I’m going to go grab this new thing. I’m going to go to this conference. Hey, I got this great new idea. Let’s slide that in. And then all of a sudden you’ve let your foot up off the gas and said, What’s important? And you’ve changed what’s important to the educators? And that’s that’s something that we might want to just hold back on. But then you also have to say sometimes there’s time and room for that, but it’s not like every time it’s like we got we got to remember where the importance lies and where the impact will lie in assessment, I think is a really great one to keep your foot on the gas on.

Yvette Lehman: Thanks, John, for entertaining this topic today. I know we both are super passionate about assessment. It had a huge impact on our own classroom practice and just the experience that we created for students. So we’re so fortunate to work with so many districts who are also really seeing the value in this particular focus of their work and inspiring us to continue to reflect on the impact of assessment in math classrooms.

Jon Orr: All right, But thanks so much.

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