One of the first things she asked us to do was to compare an assessment from last year with a copy of the standards that were being assessed. While this wasn't an earth-shattering instructional move, it was something that we hadn't done in quite a while. The purpose was to ensure that our assessments were reaching the full rigor of the standards and not stopping short by assessing only the deconstructed (unpacked) learning targets.
With the NGSS, this process leads us to asking phenomena-based questions that can't really be answered via multiple choice. Students actually have to do science during the assessment. This caused me to do some thinking and I still have unresolved questions. Does this mean that we shouldn't include any fact-based multiple choice questions on NGSS-aligned assessments? Does it mean that I should remove these from my classroom tests because they aren't an indication of student mastery of the content? If so, how do I get others to buy into this idea too?