Organization:
The 1995 Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1995) is a strong reflection of progressive ideas drawn from both the mathematics education community and the assessment community. In reviewing these standards, one has to ask whether we, as a mathematics education community, see these standards of assessment reflected in current practice. The session begins with an overview of the assessment standards from one of the original authors. Three reports from current researchers on assessment in mathematics follow. The discussant, another author of the original standards, will present his reflections on the impact of the standards on the papers presented. Each presentation will be given 12 minutes, which will allow for 30 minutes of discussion with the audience framed around the four bulleted questions below.

Perspectives:

The Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1995) stated that “assessment needs to support the continued mathematics learning of each student” (p. 6) and created six standards that would inform teachers as to how students’ mathematical learning could be supported for four broad purposes. These standards, aligned with the 1989 Curriculum and Evaluation Standards (NCTM, 1989), represented contemporary thinking that encouraged problem solving and sought ways to understand and assess students’ mathematical thinking. The assessment standards also reflected the research and thinking in the assessment literature of the time that recognized that a variety of assessment strategies need to be used to address the multi-faceted nature of student learning, and that ultimately the purpose of assessment was to support and enhance student learning (e.g. Gipps, 1994).

Current perspectives in mathematics education continue to prompt curriculum and classroom practices that value mathematical inquiry as a way to engage learners with mathematical ideas, deepen students’ understanding of mathematical concepts, and are attentive to students’ mathematical reasoning and sense-making (NCTM, 2000, 2009). Coupled with this, current assessment reform that reflects cognitive and socio-cultural theories of learning, rather than behaviorist assumptions, promotes assessment that elicits students’ thinking rather than focuses on merely knowledge recall and procedural learning (Shepard, 2001). Thus, perspectives from both mathematics education and assessment continue to echo the messages set out in the Assessment Standards.

However, several questions emerge:

• How have these assessment standards been taken up in practice?
• How do teachers negotiate the call for assessment that pays attention to students’ mathematical thinking within a landscape of accountability?
• What mathematics is shown to be valued in current assessment practices?
• What are the implications of large-scale assessment on classroom practice?

This symposium will help to address these questions through the presentation of papers and an open discussion about assessment issues with the audience.

Presenter 1: Revisiting NCTM's Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (1995) 

This presentation will look back at the educational and political environment when NCTM published Assessment Standards for School Mathematics in 1995.  The document offered an analysis of the importance and impact of assessment on individuals at various levels of the mathematics education enterprise‹from classrooms of students and teachers, to district supervisors, to high-level policy makers.  This presentation, by a member of the 1995 author team, will provide an overview of the structure, intended audiences, and key recommendations of NCTM¹s Assessment Standards, along with personal reflections about similarities and differences between today’s contemporary assessment environment and that of 1995.

Presenter 2: One test, two scores: Teachers’ use of a large-scale mathematics assessment for classroom assessment purposes

The Education Quality & Accountability Office Grade 9 Assessment of Mathematics is administered as part of Ontario’s accountability program but teachers also have the option of scoring some or all the items before returning the assessment for official scoring and can include these teacher-derived scores in students’ grades. Interviews conducted with teachers provide a sense of the ways teachers interpret both the teacher-derived and official scores. Using the NCTM assessment standards as an analytic framework, this study provides evidence that the teacher-derived scores are consistent with many characteristics of effective mathematics assessment practice and may also mitigate some negative impacts of large-scale assessments on mathematics teaching.

Presenter 3: Implementing the vision: Supporting change in teachers’ classroom assessment practices

The Assessment Standards communicated a vision for mathematics assessment requiring significant change in teacher conceptions and practice. Yet, we have limited evidence of how professional development might support teacher change in assessment. This paper reports the underlying design theory and results from a research-based, professional development (PD) program involving 32 middle grades mathematics teachers working among six schools. Analysis of classroom assessment tasks used by participating teachers with students over the duration of the project showed an increase in use of context and use of higher cognitive demand tasks in their quest to assess student understandings and inform instruction.

Presenter 4: Moving assessment forward within communities of inquiry

This paper reports on a two-year project with 42 teachers of mathematics who met in small communities of inquiry to discuss their assessment practices. Data consist of audio records and transcripts of these discussions as well as classroom assessment artifacts. Data were analyzed through several different lenses: practices, purposes, dilemmas, supports, and teacher values and beliefs. This paper presents a description of the evolving assessment practices and a discussion of what these practices tell us about the role and interconnections between the six NCTM assessment standards of mathematics, learning, equity, openness, inferences, and coherence (1995).

Importance:
This session clearly address assessment systems and some of the research presented also addresses professional development. The summary of assessment standards, the discussion of current perspectives on assessment in mathematics education, and the reporting of current research provide a firm grounding for assessment in mathematics education. Further to this, they remind our community of the power of the assessment standards and how the assessment standards are serving and can continue to serve the mathematics education community, particularly in the current era of test-based accountability.  As a mathematics education community, we need to reaffirm our thinking about what mathematics is important to assess and ways in which we can support teachers to design assessment to enhance students’ mathematical thinking.