Who is EdSteps?
EdSteps, led by the Council of Chief State School Officers, is developing a new, free resource for teaching and assessment which will answer the question, “Where is a particular student now, and what should he or she do to improve?” With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, EdSteps seeks to give teachers, parents, and students a Web-based resource for comparing their student work to that of other students. The centerpiece will be a large, public library of student work samples in key skill areas that are typically difficult and costly to assess. For each skill area, student work will be presented in a continuum — a gradual progression — from emerging to accomplished work.
Our Partnership with EdSteps
StudentPublishing.com is partnering with EdSteps to help develop these continuums by periodically asking teachers whose finished books fit with the selected skill areas, if they would be willing to submit their students’ projects to be reviewed and assessed for the EdSteps public library. As an organization dedicated to enriching education, StudentPublishing.com realizes that it is vital to not only motivate students to put forth their best work, but to be able to assess an individual’s work for both strengths and weakness. Our hope, is that by partnering with EdSteps, we can aid in this important assessment process, the results of which, will be a terrific asset to everyone in the education community. Further, we hope these continuums will help our teachers assess their future StudentPublishing.com projects!
If you should receive an email from us asking if you would like to submit your completed projects to EdSteps, please note that NO personal or student information will ever be shared by StudentPublishing.com without prior, written consent and participation is entirely voluntary. If you did choose to participate, any information regarding you, your students, or your school, will be removed from the story before being made publicly available. Only the grade level, state, and assignment information will be revealed. To view a sample Continuum, Click Here. The image above, shows the way in which EdStepswill be protecting the identity of students, even stripping out the ‘About-the-Author’ page.
More about EdSteps
For detailed information, please visit: www.EdSteps.org
The Skills
The EdSteps skill areas were selected because they are important for student success and they are traditionally difficult and costly to assess. The five skill areas — Writing, Global Competence, Creativity, Problem Solving, and Analyzing Information — are in different stages of development and will be phased in over time. Building the continuums will require at least 3,000 samples representing a broad spectrum of student work in terms of grade level, demographics, ability level, and geography.
The skills were chosen by the EdSteps Advisory Group, comprised of commissioners of state boards of education, representatives from national education organizations, and business leaders. The Advisory Board reviewed the skills and competencies other organizations cite as critical to the success of modern learners and used the information to inform their choices. The Advisory Board reviewed the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the Metiri Group, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner, ACT, the CollegeBoard and Achieve. EdSteps does not believe that these are the only five skills students should learn or even that these are the most important five. These skills are the five that the initiative will start examining, with the hope of adding additional skills over the next few years.
The Methodology
Once EdSteps has collected enough work representing students and professionals everywhere, the rating process will begin. Each continuum will be made through thousands of paired comparisons. In a paired comparison, a reviewer looks at two pieces of student work and determines which is better. This approach is different from other assessment methods, which rely on absolute judgments or rating a single item based on set criteria. The paired comparison approach is effective because comparative judgments are more concrete and easier to make than absolute judgments. For more information about the rating process, please see our Technical Report.
What Teachers are saying about EdSteps:
“Thank you for taking this project on! This is what I have needed ever since I took on teaching primary school two years ago: what is expected of a first grader’s writing? a second grader? a kindergartner? I teach in a small, rural school, and so have no other teachers handy to compare notes on this. This project could be the answer to my pleas to the universe. I’ll be watching for more updates, and I will be happy to send in samples from my students’ work” – Ms. Steffano-Davis
StudentPublishing.com would like to say THANK YOU to the teachers who have already submitted an overwhelming number of PDF’s to this important project, and to EdSteps for developing this free resource which will address critical components of preparing college and career ready students.
