Why LfA? Education policy is currently focused on the need for agreed-upon standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Virtually every state has developed content standards in core curriculum areas, including mathematics. Most states have made significant progress in developing performance standards, to be used as accountability measures in high-stakes tests. While policy emphasizes standards and assessment, it is up to teachers to figure out how standards should be implemented in the classroom. Teachers and administrators need to examine the meaning of each standard, what student performance looks like when the standard is mastered, and how they would find evidence of such mastery. And most importantly, they need to think together about what needs to happen to provide students opportunities to learn and to meet the standards. The movement to establish agreed-upon standards and, in turn, base teaching practices and school decision-making on those standards, requires that assessment systems be used in more informative ways than ever before. Data from the assessment system can serve as a resource to determine whether instructional programs reflect the agreed-upon standards. Teachers - as well as others in the educational community - need to be confident that assessment aligns with standards being implemented in their classrooms. This alignment of assessment with instruction ensures that what is taught is being tested and that what is being tested is being taught. Public attention is usually focused on large-scale test results, but an assessment system includes much more. Classroom assessment plays a critical role in the system, and it is here that alignment of assessment with instruction is of major importance. Teachers use assessment to monitor student progress and they make instructional decisions based on the assessment data they collect. Currently, many professional development programs use assessment to engage teachers in deepening their own understanding of mathematics content, as well as refining their teaching practices. Groups of teachers gather to review, score, and discuss student work. These activities help focus teachers on the consequences of their teaching, as they detect discrepancies between what they believe they teach and what students appear to have learned (Driscoll and Bryant, 1998). This project looks at assessment in a different light, by examining assessment items themselves, particularly as they relate to any given set of standards. Feedback from our field-test participants confirms that analyzing the mathematics in assessment items helps teachers make sense of standards and on their implementation in the classroom. Translating standards into instructional practice is no easy task. Certainly attempting the task as an individual teacher would be overwhelming. Participants in Learning from Assessment sessions work together to clarify the meaning of standards, evaluate assessment tools in terms of their alignment to mathematics standards at the middle school level, and plan student learning experiences that reflect standards-based teaching. Thus by examining assessment through standards, teachers acquire new tools for enhancing student achievement.   Back to "Introduction"