Creating Alternative Assessments Aligned to CCSS

As I have been working with districts, there has become an increased emphasis in aligning the district assessment process to one that is aligned with the CCSS assessment.  As I write this blog, I am aware that the assessment has not been created.  Our state is a member of the Smarter Balanced Consortium.  The assessment itself has not been created, but some guidelines have. 

A few things I know:

A.   It will not just be a multiple choice assessment only

B.    The 8 Mathematical Practices will be infused into the assessment

C.    Open-ended or constructed response will be a piece of the puzzle

How does a district then begin to align their assessment practices?  I posted earlier Six Easy Steps to Compare Your Standards with the Common Core Standards.  This blog is about using a tool called, Survey of Enacted Curriculum.  I think this tool may be the best starting point to look at open-ended alternative assessments. See page 2.

Notice that in each sample selection there are five boxes for each big picture idea. These five boxes correlate to the level of understanding. Scroll to the bottom of this screen.

The further to the right of the five boxes the higher level of understanding students need to know about the content. Many equate this to Blooms Taxonomy of information. In our state, we refer to it as the Cognitive Category. So if we look back at our date set we can have an idea of which concepts will require higher-level thinking.

If a concept falls into category 3-5 then an open-ended assessment is probably fairly likely.  Category 3 - Demonstrate Understanding, Category 4 - Conjecture, Analyze, Generalize, and Prove, and Category 5 - Solve Non-routine Problems and Make Connections. 

Teachers then used this information as they looked through resources looking for open-ended projects, assessments, and other resources to create an end of year assessment aligned to the CCSS.