Assessment:  The AASL Fall Forum, 2006
By Doc Roth
Sold out with 500 attendees and a waiting list, the American Association of School Librarians 2006 Fall Forum decisively dispelled concerns about whether anyone would come to a forum exclusively about assessment.  Library teachers from almost every state gathered in Warwick, Rhode Island on October 13-15 to consider the role of assessment in a school library program.  The forum covered many aspects of assessment in library programs including assessment’s nature and uses, the difference between assessment and evaluation, assessment’s place in a school library program, and tools for assessment.  The forum also allowed opportunities for networking with colleagues from around the country.

In the opening general session Professor Violet Harada of the University of Hawaii dispelled misconceptions such as “assessment is divorced from the learning process” and supported assertions such as “assessment is central to effective teaching.”  Dr. Harada told the story of an eight year old student who fortunately, albeit erroneously, called assessment “assistment.”  When used well by skillful educators, “assessment is about assistment,” Dr. Harada said.  Dr. Harada also discussed what she found to be the three kinds of assessment:  assessment of learning, assessment for learning and assessment for advocacy.  In brief, she characterized assessment of learning as “summative, judgmental,” assessment for learning as “formative, ongoing, reflective,” and assessment for advocacy as focusing “on communication.” Dr. Harada said that research indicates that good assessment serves teachers as well as students.

With assessment for learning, assessment happens during teaching and learning activities.  Students become partners in assessing their learning.  And the diagnostic element of assessment informs the teaching that the library teacher and the classroom teacher want to do.  As Dr. Harada’s Power Point presentation expressed this, “Assessment for learning focuses on student’s evolving performance: Where am I going?  Where am I now?  How do I close the gap?”  (Power Point Slide (PPS), p. 5)  Many instruments of assessment are available for this type of teaching and learning.  Dr. Harada lists, for example, “learning logs, rating scales, checklists, conferences, graphic organizers, rubrics.”  (PPS, p. 5)

In a later plenary session, Marjorie L. Pappas, a Virtual Instructor at Rutgers University, gave a presentation entitled “Tools of Assessment.”  In a display of the speed of information in our environment today, Dr. Pappas opened her presentation with a Power Point slide that quoted a portion of one of Dr. Harada’s Power Point slides, complete with a citation of the earlier presentation.  The selection that Dr. Pappas chose to quote was Dr. Harada’s definition of assessment as the “Process of collecting, analyzing and reporting data that informs us about progress and problems a learner encounters in a learning experience.”  (Pappas, PPS, p. 1)  Dr. Pappas went on to discuss a number of assessment tools and how Library Teachers can use them to collect evidence of student learning.  For example, Dr. Pappas provided a model of a K-W-L (Know, Wonder, Learned) Chart that had four columns titled What I Know, What I Wonder, How I Will Find Out, and What I Learned.  She said that this chart could be used to help students find a focus in an assignment as well as to provide evidence of the process of student learning.

In the other two plenary sessions Barbara Stripling spoke on “What is Assessment, and Why Should the School Librarian Be Involved” and Allison Zmuda addressed “Who Gives You the Authority to Do What You Are Doing?”  Ms Stripling, past president of AASL and Director of Library Media Services for New York City, spoke about the meaning of “information fluency.”  She said that fluency means that a person understands something so well that she or he can apply it in any area.  Therefore, a student who is information fluent is able to find information in any area of knowledge.  Ms Stripling discussed three areas of assessment: diagnostic assessment (before new learning), formative assessment (during learning), and Summative Assessment (after “a process of learning”).  She also spoke of New York City’s school library program and provided the URL for its website: http://schools.nyc.gov/library .

Allison Zmuda, Senior Education Specialist for the Capitol Regional Education Council in Hartford, Connecticut, located the authority for the work of library teachers not in the administrative structure of a school but rather in the need for the work itself, that is, in the gap between expectations for student learning and “the current achievement levels of students.”  (Zmuda, PPS, no. 2)  Ms Zmuda said that this gap always exists.  And it is this “gap between a worthy vision and the current reality [that] is the engine of all reform.”  (Zmuda, PPS 12)  In essence, and very briefly, Ms Zmuda built on this foundation to say that library teachers need to collect data that identifies the gaps and also need to participate in the assessment and evaluation of student learning.

Two breakout sessions and a roundtable discussion provided opportunities for library teachers to work in smaller groups exclusively with others who work in the same grade level – elementary, middle school and high school.

Overall, the forum demonstrated that assessment does merit at least a two-day conference.  On a note of personal experience, a teacher came to my library earlier today, serendipitously enough, about collaborating on a project.  Some of this teacher’s approach involved what Dr. Harada identified as assessment for learning.  We talked about how assessment can work as part of the learning process.  During our conversation planning this project, I showed the teacher some of the assessment tools in Dr. Pappas’ Power Point printouts.  The teacher asked me if I could contact Dr. Pappas to get the full Power Point in digital format.  I think I will keep the loose leaf binder of materials from the Fall Forum near my desk.  Perhaps I will collect data that will stand as evidence of how often material from the AASL Fall Forum of 2006 factors into actual practice.