Susan M. Brookhart

Using Rubrics for Teaching and Learning offers practical, evidence-based ideas for how rubrics can serve the multifaceted needs of students. Research shows that, under the right conditions, rubrics can promote learning, scaffold effective peer and self-assessment, and even support self-regulated learning, while also expediting an informative grading process. Built on four principles of effective application, this accessible book posits that rubrics must be developmentally and pedagogically appropriate, illuminate the learning goals, enable constructive feedback, and produce fair grades. Critiques of common shortcomings in rubric design and implementation offer guidance for positive, purposeful classroom experiences. Pre- and in-service teachers who read this book will come away with skills in using rubrics to support learning.

Using Rubrics for Teaching and Learning offers practical, evidence-based ideas for how rubrics can serve the multifaceted needs of students. Research shows that, under the right conditions, rubrics can promote learning, scaffold effective peer and self-assessment, and even support self-regulated learning, while also expediting an informative grading process. Built on four principles of effective application, this accessible book posits that rubrics must be developmentally and pedagogically appropriate, illuminate the learning goals, enable constructive feedback, and produce fair grades. Critiques of common shortcomings in rubric design and implementation offer guidance for positive, purposeful classroom experiences. Pre- and in-service teachers who read this book will come away with skills in using rubrics to support learning.

The only assessment book K–12 teachers need to monitor and maximize student learning.Classroom assessment is a vital part of teaching. It helps make student learning—or a lack thereof—visible so that teachers can adjust teaching practices and better support learners. But designing and implementing reliable assessments is a complex process.In this comprehensive book by assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart, you will learn the foundational concepts and practical skills necessary to be successful with classroom assessment. Organized into 21 essentials, the book addresses everything from using pre-assessment before starting new lessons to communicating with parents about their child's academic growth. Along the way, you will discover how to Create clear learning targets and success criteria based on standards. Provide meaningful feedback to students about progress toward goals. Involve students in the regulation of their own learning. Use homework to check for understanding. Decide on instructional follow-up based on formative assessment data. Make accommodations for students with IEPs and support equity and fairness. Design performance tasks for individuals and groups. Craft rubrics and design classroom tests.With strategies that support high-quality assessment, tips and troubleshooting advice, and examples across subject areas and grade levels, Classroom Assessment Essentials will help you make effective assessment a cornerstone of your classroom.

Assessment literacy leads to improved outcomes for all Do you know how to ensure teachers have the knowledge and skill to use assessment data to improve student learning? Do you know the influence that student involvement in assessments has on motivation and learning? This book guides you and your leadership team through 10 assessment literacy goals with practical content, how-to’s, success indicators, and activities to extend and process learning. You will come away understanding the attributes of comprehensive and balanced assessment systems, the necessity for clear academic achievement targets, and why assessment quality is essential. In addition to providing rubrics, processes, and practical tools that work across all grade levels and subject areas, this book shows you how to: Work with staff to integrate formative assessment and sound grading practicesCommunicate with all members of the school community about student learningProtect students and teachers by avoiding unethical and inappropriate assessment useUse student assessment information to improve and inform instruction Develop assessment policies that support quality assessment practice Advance your understanding of assessment so your teachers can accurately measure learning, practice effective formative assessment strategies, and ensure and maintain a comprehensive and balanced assessment system in your school or district.

Are you picking up all your students' work is trying to tell you? In this book, assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart and instructional coach Alice Oakley walk teachers through a better and more illuminating way to approach student work across grade levels and content areas. You'll learn to view students' assignments not as a verdict on right or wrong but as a window into what students "got" and how they are thinking about it. The insight you'll gain will help you* Infer what students are thinking,* Provide effective feedback,* Decide on next instructional moves, and* Grow as a professional.Brookhart and Oakley then guide teachers through the next steps: clarify learning goals, increase the quality of classroom assessments, deepen your content and pedagogical knowledge, study student work with colleagues, and involve students in the formative learning cycle. The book's many authentic examples of student work and teacher insights, coaching tips, and reflection questions will help readers move from looking at student work for correctness to looking at student work as evidence of student thinking.

Formative assessment is one of the best ways to increase student learning and enhance teacher quality. But effective formative assessment is not part of most classrooms, largely because teachers misunderstand what it is and don't have the necessary skills to implement it.In the updated 2nd edition of this practical guide for school leaders, authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart define formative assessment as an active, continual process in which teachers and students work together—every day, every minute—to gather evidence of learning, always keeping in mind three guiding questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? What strategy or strategies can help me get to where I need to go?Chapters focus on the six interrelated elements of formative assessment: (1) shared learning targets and criteria for success, (2) feedback that feeds learning forward, (3) student self-assessment and peer assessment, (4) student goal setting, (5) strategic teacher questioning, and (6) student engagement in asking effective questions. Using specific examples based on their extensive work with teachers, the authors provide:Strategic talking points and conversation starters to address common misconceptions about formative assessment.Practical classroom strategies to share with teachers that cultivate students as self-regulated, assessment-capable learners.Ways to model the elements of formative assessment in conversations with teachers about their professional learning.""What if"" scenarios and advice for how to deal with them.Questions for reflection to gauge understanding and progress.As Moss and Brookhart emphasize, the goal is not to ""do"" formative assessment, but to embrace a major cultural change that moves away from teacher-led instruction to a partnership of intentional inquiry between student and teacher, with better teaching and learning as the outcome.

Grading is one of the most hotly debated topics in education, and grading practices themselves are largely based on tradition, instinct, or personal history or philosophy. But to be effective, grading policies and practices must be based on trustworthy research evidence.Enter this book: a review of 100-plus years of grading research that presents the broadest and most comprehensive summary of research on grading and reporting available to date, with clear takeaways for learning and teaching. Edited by Thomas R. Guskey and Susan M. Brookhart, this indispensable guide features thoughtful, thorough dives into the research from a distinguished team of scholars, geared to a broad range of stakeholders, including teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and researchers. Each chapter addresses a different area of grading research and describes how the major findings in that area might be leveraged to improve grading policy and practice. Ultimately, Guskey and Brookhart identify four themes emerging from the research that can guide these efforts:Start with clear learning goals.Focus on the feedback function of grades.Limit the number of grade categories.Provide multiple grades that reflect product, process, and progress criteria.By distilling the vast body of research evidence into meaningful, actionable findings and strategies, this book is the jump-start all stakeholders need to build a better understanding of what works—and where to go from here.

Despite feedback‘s demonstratively positive effects on student performance, research on the specific components of successful feedback practice is in short supply. In Using Feedback to Improve Learning, Ruiz-Primo and Brookhart offer critical characteristics of feedback strategies to affirm classroom feedback’s positive effect on student learning. The book provides pre- and in-service teachers as well as educational researchers with empirically supported techniques for using feedback as a part of formative assessment in the classroom.

Despite feedback‘s demonstratively positive effects on student performance, research on the specific components of successful feedback practice is in short supply. In Using Feedback to Improve Learning, Ruiz-Primo and Brookhart offer critical characteristics of feedback strategies to affirm classroom feedback’s positive effect on student learning. The book provides pre- and in-service teachers as well as educational researchers with empirically supported techniques for using feedback as a part of formative assessment in the classroom.

Grades are imperfect, shorthand answers to ""What did students learn, and how well?"" In How to Use Grading to Improve Learning, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart guides educators at all levels in figuring out how to produce grades—for single assignments and report cards—that accurately communicate students' achievement of learning goals.Brookhart explores topics that are fundamental to effective grading and learning practices:Acknowledging that all students can learn.Supporting and motivating student effort and learning.Designing and grading appropriate assessments.Creating policies for report card grading.Implementing learning-focused grading policies.Communicating with students and parents.Assessing school or district readiness for grading reform.The book is grounded in research and resonates with the real lessons learned in the classroom. Although grading is a necessary part of schooling, Brookhart reminds us that children are sent to school to learn, not to get grades. This highly practical book will help you put grading and learning into proper perspective, offering strategies you can use right away to ensure that your grading practices actually support student learning.

Properly crafted and individually tailored feedback on student work boosts student achievement across subjects and grades. In this updated and expanded second edition of her best-selling book, Susan M. Brookhart offers enhanced guidance and three lenses for considering the effectiveness of feedback: (1) does it conform to the research, (2) does it offer an episode of learning for the student and teacher, and (3) does the student use the feedback to extend learning? In this comprehensive guide for teachers at all levels, you will find information on every aspect of feedback, including:Strategies to uplift and encourage students to persevere in their work.How to formulate and deliver feedback that both assesses learning and extends instruction.When and how to use oral, written, and visual as well as individual, group, or whole-class feedback.A concise and updated overview of the research findings on feedback and how they apply to today's classrooms.In addition, the book is replete with examples of good and bad feedback as well as rubrics that you can use to construct feedback tailored to different learners, including successful students, struggling students, and English language learners.The vast majority of students will respond positively to feedback that shows you care about them and their learning. Whether you teach young students or teens, this book is an invaluable resource for guaranteeing that the feedback you give students is engaging, informative, and, above all, effective.

In How to Make Decisions with Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district.Readers will learn:What different kinds of data can—and cannot—tell us about student learning.What different analyses reveal about changes in student achievement.How to interpret, use, and share relevant data.How to create a model to go from problem to solution in a data-based decision-making process.With easy-to-understand explanations, supplemented by examples and scenarios from actual schools, this book offers a path to better understanding, more accurate interpretation of assessment results, and—most important—more effective use of data to improve teaching and learning.

Revolutionize the walkthrough to focus on the endgame of teaching: student learning. Authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart present the proven practice of formative walkthroughs that ask and answer questions that are specific to what the student is learning and doing.Learn the value of having the observer examine the lesson from the student's point of view and seek evidence of seven key learning components:A worthwhile lesson.A learning target.A performance of understanding.Look-fors, or success criteria.Formative feedback.Student self-assessment.Effective questioning.Drawing upon their research and extensive work with K-12 teachers and administrators, Moss and Brookhart delve into the learning target theory of action that debuted in Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson and show you how to develop a schoolwide collaborative culture that enhances the learning of teachers, administrators, coaches, and students. They present detailed examples of how formative walkthroughs work across grade levels and subject areas, and provide useful templates that administrators and coaches can use to get started now.Grounded in the beliefs that schools improve when educators improve and that the best evidence of improvement comes from what we see students doing to learn in every lesson, every day, Formative Classroom Walkthroughs offers a path to improvement that makes sense and makes a difference.

With new standards emphasizing higher-order thinking skills, students will have to demonstrate their ability to do far more than simply remember facts and procedures. But what's the best way for teachers to ensure that students have such skills? In this highly accessible guide, author Susan M. Brookhart shows how to do just that, by providing specific guidelines for designing targeted questions and tasks that align with standards and assess students' ability to think at higher levels. Aided by dozens of examples across grade levels and subject areas, readers will learn how to:Take a student perspective and view assessment questions and tasks as ""problems to solve.""Design multiple-choice questions that require higher-order thinking.Understand the difference between ""open"" and ""closed"" questions and how to use open questions effectively.Vary and control the features of performance assessment tasks, including cognitive level and difficulty, to target different thinking skills.Manage the assessment of higher-order thinking within the larger context of teaching and learning.Brookhart also provides an ""idea bank"" that teachers can use to jump-start their own thinking as they create assessments.Timely and practical, How to Design Questions and Tasks to Assess Student Thinking is essential reading for 21st century teachers who want their students to excel in the classroom and beyond.

Group work is a growing trend in schools, as educators seek more complex, more authentic assessment tasks and assign projects and presentations for students to work on together. The Common Core State Standards call for increased student collaboration in various subject areas, and collaboration is considered one of the 21st century skills that students need to master in order to succeed in school and beyond. Many teachers, though, are uncomfortable giving group grades, which may or may not actually reflect an individual student's learning. How else to proceed? Assessment expert Susan M. Brookhart offers practical advice, strategies, and examples to help teachers understand the following:What the differences are between group projects and cooperative learning.How to assess and report on (but not grade) learning skills and group interaction skills.How to assess and grade individual achievement of learning goals after group projects.Why having students work together is a good thing—but group grades are not.

What is a rubric? A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for student work that describes levels of performance quality. Sounds simple enough, right? Unfortunately, rubrics are commonly misunderstood and misused.The good news is that when rubrics are created and used correctly, they are strong tools that support and enhance classroom instruction and student learning. In this comprehensive guide, author Susan M. Brookhart identifies two essential components of effective rubrics: (1) criteria that relate to the learning (not the ""tasks"") that students are being asked to demonstrate and (2) clear descriptions of performance across a continuum of quality. She outlines the difference between various kinds of rubrics (for example, general versus task-specific, and analytic versus holistic), explains when using each type of rubric is appropriate, and highlights examples from all grade levels and assorted content areas. In addition, Brookhart addresses:Common misconceptions about rubrics.Important differences between rubrics and other assessment tools such as checklists and rating scales, and when such alternatives can be useful.How to use rubrics for formative assessment and grading, including standards-based grading and report card grades.Intended for educators who are already familiar with rubrics as well as those who are not, this book is a complete resource for writing effective rubrics and for choosing wisely from among the many rubrics that are available on the Internet and from other sources. And it makes the case that rubrics, when used appropriately, can improve outcomes by helping teachers teach and helping students learn.

In Learning Targets, Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart contend that improving student learning and achievement happens in the immediacy of an individual lesson--what they call ""today's lesson""—or it doesn't happen at all.The key to making today's lesson meaningful? Learning targets. Written from students' point of view, a learning target describes a lesson-sized chunk of information and skills that students will come to know deeply. Each lesson's learning target connects to the next lesson's target, enabling students to master a coherent series of challenges that ultimately lead to important curricular standards.Drawing from the authors' extensive research and professional learning partnerships with classrooms, schools, and school districts, this practical book:Situates learning targets in a theory of action that students, teachers, principals, and central-office administrators can use to unify their efforts to raise student achievement and create a culture of evidence-based, results-oriented practice.Provides strategies for designing learning targets that promote higher-order thinking and foster student goal setting, self-assessment, and self-regulation.Explains how to design a strong performance of understanding, an activity that produces evidence of students' progress toward the learning target.Shows how to use learning targets to guide summative assessment and grading.Learning Targets also includes reproducible planning forms, a classroom walk-through guide, a lesson-planning process guide, and guides to teacher and student self-assessment.What students are actually doing during today's lesson is both the source of and the yardstick for school improvement efforts. By applying the insights in this book to your own work, you can improve your teaching expertise and dramatically empower all students as stakeholders in their own learning.