What Works in Education: Continual Assessment

SECOND OF THREE PARTS.

WEST HARTFORD--Braeburn Elementary School's fifth-grade teachers commandeered the brick conference room off Principal Natalie Simpson's office the week before winter break. Graded papers full of circles partially colored in and open-ended problems like '23/3=?' spilled out of manila folders and littered the table.

Shannon Mlodzinski, the statistician of the group, announced the results of the most recent assessment on improper fractions, distributing a list of students and scores. Sixteen out of about 70 fifth-graders got perfect scores and many others had mastered the concepts. But the test results suggested 25 students still weren't getting it.

Braeburn teacher Shannon Mlodzinski with three of her fifth-graders

As Mlodzinski began making lists of these students with a green pen, all three teachers began to brainstorm what they needed to do that week in the classroom.

These so-called "data team" meetings take place every week at every grade-level at Braeburn and every school in West Hartford. Assessments are reviewed, assignments are discussed and graded, and plans for future instruction are made. Though teachers pay attention to the performance of all students, of course, they play a particularly crucial role in West Hartford's attempts to reduce the achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers.

Connecticut has the nation's largest achievement gap when it's measured by students' socioeconomic status, with poor students performing almost three grade-levels below their more privileged peers, according to national exams. It's a gap that stubbornly persists in every district in the state.

"More than half the time, the low-income students are also the neediest students," estimated Mlodzinski. "To ask them at 8 years old to be responsible for their own homework, when some of them are wondering where their next meal is going to come from, is tough."

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