Interim Assessments as a Predictive Tool and Driver of Formative Assessment Practices to Improve Student Performance on State Assessments

Abstract

The problem of practice on which this study focused was the establishment of interim assessments as a predictive tool and driver of formative assessment practices to improve student performance. The initial phase of the study involved equipping educators with tools to understand each student’s ability to be proficient on the EOG Assessment based on the previous year’s EOG data. The next phase of the study used the predictive capacity of the i-Ready Adaptive Diagnostic Assessment (Curriculum Associates, n.d.) to help identify how formative assessment practices could be used to help students achieve that predicted score—which was, in turn, anticipated to facilitate more students being proficient on the EOG Assessments at the end of the school year. An additional focus of the study was to use the predictive value of the i Ready Adaptive Diagnostic Assessment to reduce the number of students who lost their proficiency rating from one year to the next. Phase One of the action research adopted here was focused on identifying what formative assessment practices School F used the past three years. The purpose of identifying those practices was so that they had the potential to be used in School B. Part of this was to highlight the importance of understanding at what level of proficiency students commenced the school year, and the development of a plan to ensure they either stayed proficient or grew from being non-proficient to proficient. The aim of the action research phase was to empower the teachers in School B to determine whether students made progress after each administration of the i-Ready Adaptive Diagnostic Assessment. Related professional development sessions equipped the teachers with an understanding of the predicted scores and what interventions they had to implement to ensure students improved between each administration of the i-Ready Adaptive Diagnostic Assessment—thereby ensuring students had the greatest chance of being proficient on the EOG Assessment at the end of the school year.