Hi Everyone,

A few months ago, Bonnita Solberg (a list member) asked for some
recommendations for assessment resources to be shared at a Professional
Development retreat, and got some helpful responses from the FOB
community both on and off-list. (Thanks to those of you who shared!) We
have been curious how these discussion lists are being used for
professional development activities, so we asked Bonnita if she could
write a summary of this experience. She put in some very precious time
to record the experience and write a list of the assessment resources,
both of which can be shared with you all and others. The process that
her center used was very much like the inquiry-based staff development
process described in last week's FOB Article-of-the-Week, and by Martha
in yesterday's message.

I would like to share Bonnita's summary with you and invite your
comments and questions.

Thanks so much,
Julie

**********************
Bonnita writes:

Interested List Moderators:  You may post this response to a request I
received to relate how the web retrievals I sent earlier were used in
the ESL PD committee addressing the issue of assessments in the Oakland
Adult and Career Education (OACE) program. It is not the same article I
wrote earlier, nor is it intended to meet that purpose. It may be good
to have this precede the list of web retrievals. Here goes--
 
A committee of several classroom teachers, teachers on special
assignment and two administrators first came together in November 2006
to meet the challenge of developing an assessment process.  We began by
contacting several districts, both K12 and community colleges, within CA
and other states, to determine if assessments were available "ready
made" for use in our program.  Although there is a myriad of assessment
tools in use, none met our needs.  
 
After a lengthy discussion, the PD committee agreed on a goal in January
2007 to develop an in-house assessment process that is uniform and
consistent across the five ESL levels.   Rather than the committee
developing assessments, we chose to invite OACE classroom teachers to
present models of their assessment tools at a retreat in February. We
did not employ experts in the field, nor did we mount workshops or study
circles.  Instead, work groups were held on Friday afternoons prior to
the retreat; small groups of teachers made poster boards to demonstrate
their assessment tools.  During and after the retreat, it became
apparent that we were floundering.  Teachers were presenting excellent
classroom exercises from daily practice, but had not taken them to ythe
next step: developing assessment tools that could be recorded and used
by the teacher to adjust their daily practice.  Classroom exercises
could not be presented to the student nor shown to teachers who would
receive a promoted student as evidence of student progress in class. 
Classroom exercises are not hard data for administration or funding
sources to show OACE was meeting the learning goals of students. 
Without examples of the many types of assessments acceptable and useful
for these purposes, teachers were retaining student assessments "in
their heads", but not on a reportable form.  
 
Enter web resources; I accessed the web and compiled folders of
assessment examples and brief articles on the academics of assessment. 
These were used to inform both the committee and teachers participating
in the PD training; with this information in hand, teachers will be able
to adjust classroom exercises to meet the criteria of an assessment tool
of excellence--a work in progress.  We are at the end of a year of
paradigm shift from a traditional model of attending workshops and being
taught by an expert, to mounting and implementing workshops, and
learning hands on.  It is sometimes painful, never boring, always
engaging.  Although we did not meet our goal for the year, we have
adjusted Oakland's innovative PD model to meet the needs of the teachers
first; program goals will surely follow suit.

Julie McKinney
Discussion List Moderator
World Education/NCSALL
jmckinney at worlded.org