An Adventure in Excellence:	E. Todd
A Community Portrait	Revised, 1999

"Given the level of interest in authentic assessment, what features might such an assessment possess? What criteria might be be appropriate for guiding those designing new approaches to assessment in education? What follows are eight criteria that seem to me to be appropriate for creating and appraising new assessment practices in education . . . .

(1.) The tasks used to assess what students know and can do need to reflect the tasks they will encounter in the world outside of schools, not merely those limited to the schools themselves. . . .

(2.) The tasks used to assess students should reveal how students go about solving a problem, not only the solutions they formulated. . . . (3.) Assessment tasks should reflect the values of the intellectual community from which the tasks are derived. . . . (4.) Assessment tasks need not be limited to solo performance. Many of the most important tasks we undertake require group efforts. . . . (5.) New assessment tasks should make possible more than one acceptable solution to a problem and more than one acceptable answer to a question. . . . (6.) Assessment tasks should have curricular relevance, but not be limited to the curriculum as taught. . . . (7.) Assessment tasks should require students to display a sensitivity to configurations or wholes, not simply to discrete elements. . . . (8.) Assessment tasks should permit the student to select a form of representation he or she chooses to use to display what has been learned. . . .

. . . . As assessment leads to increasingly fine-grained, interpretive appraisals, it is less amenable to crisp, reductive measurement and comparison of student learning, experience, and performance. Can the public appetite for discrete certainty in assessment be satisfied by interpretive assessment practices? What vision of education must a public hold to accept less discrete indicators? Can a rationally oriented meritocracy embrace such a vision? Will a functionally differentiated conception of assessment increase the acceptability of approaches to assessment that are more personalistic in focus? If it does, will the reductionistic testing practices that now prevail marginalize the newer assessment as parents and others in the community continue to seek the bottom line? I can only hope that with responsible and articulate interpretation, authentic assessment will be understood and valued by the public-at-large. If it is, assessment will not only contribute to better schooling for children, it will also contribute to a broader, more generous conception of education itself." (Eisner, 1994).

Rationale for Care Statement: . . . . . .

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Definitions:

"Evaluation . . . ." Authentic Assessment . . . ." "Failure . . . ." "Grade . . . ."

"Grade Level . . . ." "Environment . . . ." "Portfolio . . . ." "Portfolio Assessment . . . ."

"Standard . . . ." "Achievement . . . ."

"Evaluation is the systematic and continuous process of making judgments about human performance and the institutional environment." (Todd, 1986)@.

Consequences: If the human beings whose lives are affected by the school accept these definitions the following consequences will occur at ____________________________________________________.

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"Whatever we do in a public school depends upon what we think students, teachers and parents are capable of accomplishing in their lives. The goals we seek, the things we do, the judgments we make, the experiments we are willing to try, are determined by our beliefs about the nature of an individual and his/her capabilities." (Todd, 1985, 1995)

1. A. Belief: If we believe that we can recognize that students are uniquely different--in physical growth, in intellectual power, in social maturity, in readiness to learn, in any human attribute--then every effort should be made to obtain and use evaluative data as the basis for growth.

B. Needed Actions:

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2. A. Belief: if we believe that we can accept the fact that educational personnel are uniquely different--in technical competencies, in the desire to change, in commitments to students, in possession of individual talents then every effort should be made to obtain and use evaluative data as the basis for initial and continuous employment.

B. Needed Actions:

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3. A. Belief: If we believe that curriculum can be defined as the planned educational experiences offered by a school which can take place anywhere at any time we need to obtain and use evaluative data as the basis for providing qualitative educational experiences for all students.

B. Needed Actions:

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4. A. Belief: If we believe that the lives of students, educational personnel, parents, and taxpayers are affected by the public schools, every effort should be made to obtain and use evaluative data as the basis for meaningful participation in the school's decision-making activities.

B. Needed Actions:

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5. A. Belief: If we believe that we can insist that administrative decisions must be congruent with instructional decisions we must obtain and use evaluative data for determining appropriate linkages between both kinds of decisions.

B. Needed Actions:

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6. A. Belief: If we believe that public schools should be exemplary models of peacemaking communities then every effort should be made to obtain and use evaluative data as the basis for . . . .

B. Needed Actions:

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7. A. Belief: If we believe that parents and students . . .

B. Needed Actions:

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A public school has the potential for becoming an evaluating community when the following conditions exist:

(1) The system of educational ideas . . . .

(2) Faculty, administrators, and support personnel are employed not only because of professional competence, but also . . . .

(3) A review of professional literature is utilized in the evaluation of human performance and the institutional environment . . . .

(4) The human beings whose lives are affected by the public school. . . .

(5) The interfacing of multiple community portraits. . . .

(6) The school board. . . .

(7) Caring individuals . . . .

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(11) . . . .

(12) . . . .

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"No matter the business, a good product is essential. That means determining what the customers want and then figuring out what we can provide. Over a long peiod, we have found that close communication with customers can mean the difference between success or failure. They give us the best feedback about our service; they tell us what they like or dislike about what we offer and what we do not offer that they wish we did. We try to respond to their requests whenever feasible, which is why building a spirit of change into the company is so important. It is also why paying attention to details is critical.

One way we have tried to do both is by implementing a Japanese philosophy known as kaizen, which had its beginnings in rice farming, Kaizen, a process that involves gradual but continouous improvement, has helped us build into the company the spirit that everything we do can be done better. Looking at the general quality of service that Fidelity provides its customers, it is fair to say we do a good job. But in closely examining some particular things that we do, especially in new areas, one finds that there are many rough edges. We are not as good as we think we are. Kaizen has helped us to strive for improvement when we might otherwise have been content with what we had already achieved. That is how we must continue if we want to remain a leader . . . .

. . . . We started with kaizen's premise that how well we do little things daily could determine our success. If every employee strived to do his or her job better, that could translate into major improvements in how we as a company did business. The wonderful thing about making small changes is that you can see the effect they have on the total system. If a small change does not work well, it can easily be reversed. If it does work, then you can make another change, until cumulatively a tremendous change has been created. Of course, in order to detect improvement, objective measures of performance are needed for every aspect of a job.

In the spirit of kaizen, we continually look at what to measure, how to measure it, and what the results mean. Measuring the quality of what you produce in the service business is much more difficult than if you sell a widget that is supposed to last for ten years and breaks in ten days. So we measure a lot of things, from the quality of our investment results to the length of time it takes us to solve customer problems; once we have consistently met our benchmarks, we set new ones. Measurement is not an end in itself. It is a means to higher quality, timeliness, and lower costs." (Johnson 3d, E.C., 1996).

The activation and successful implementation of a community portrait provides an opportunity for appropriate curriculum development activities. The implications are as follows:

Elementary Schools:

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Secondary Schools:

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For a complete model of an individual classroom community see Appendix A.

"The curriculum can be defined as the planned educational experiences offered by a school which can take place any where at any time in the multiple context of the school, e.g. public schools as caring communities, as changing communities, as scholarly communities, as evaluating communities. . . .(Todd, 1965, 1992).

"Curriculum construction is an ongoing social activity that is shaped by various contextual influences within and beyond the classroom and accomplished interactively, primarily by teachers and students. The curriculum is not a tangible product but the actual, day-to-day interactions of students, teachers, knowledge and milieu . . . . Curriculum as contexualized social process encompasses both subject matter and social organization and their interrelations. Social organization, including teacher and student roles (and their attendant right and obligations) and patterns of interaction, provides a setting for academic activities that can extend or constrain students' learning opportunities . . . . The curriculum knowledge or subject matter of interest here is primarily but not solely academic (e.g., mathematics, history). It also includes the personal, social, and world knowledge that is communicated or otherwise made available to students and what might be characterized as knowledge about knowledge - Its nature, sources, limits and change . . . . Curriculum knowledge as the knowledge made available to students refers to opportunities to construct, reconstruct, or critique knowledge. Knowledge selection and organization refer both to the information that is communicated directly and the opportunities that are provided for students to create and critique knowledge. . . . Knowledge distribution refers to the kinds of knowledge opportunities made available to different groups of students." (Cornbleth, 1990).

"The opportunities for evaluating appropriate scholarly performance in changing classrooms are inseparably linked with the opportunities for students to engage in an array of qualitative instructional activities carried out in decision-making communities." (Todd, 1996).

Since we can only speculate about the unlimited possibilities for educational experiences which could facilitate the nurturing of futuristic agents of change who are collegial scholars in the third millennium we believe that evaluating classrooms can be described as follows:

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"Imagine all the people whose lives are affected by the school. . ."

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"Changes in a school system are often in direct conflict with the changes taking place in the community, thus creating a highly complex and political situation." (Todd, 1969).

Since there are different groups of human being whose lives are affected by the public school there are political risks for these persons responsible for the development and implementation of the community portrait. These risks are as follows:

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Appendix A.