Sigh .... Assessment!

Assessment is a topic that I have always found uncomfortable. My assessments and my grading practice have been heavily critiqued by parents, and heck -- by students too. I guess that's one reason it makes me feel uncomfortable.  It seems like my assessments are never good enough.  Designing a tool to measure a students growth is very difficult when different parties have varying ideas of what that growth should look like.  And I think that’s another reason I feel uncomfortable about assessments.  I’m always questioning my own ideas -- Am I looking at this the right way?  Am I being too hard on the students?  Am I being too easy? Whatever the reason  -- assessment happens.

I have really enjoyed digging into assessment during this course and trying and learning new things and ideas. My learning has caused me to question and clarify my own understanding and purpose for assessment in the classroom.  I have a really wonderful teaching partner (and team!) who always engages in these types of conversations with me.  We have gone around and around on the topic of assessment over the years.

• How do we vary assessments?  It seems like written and oral are the primary ways students communicate their understanding.
• How do we differentiate assessments?  DO we differentiate assessments?
• How do we assess individual learning that happened during a collaborative group project?
• Do individual assessments always have to be done in a closed environment (no talking, student works alone)
• How do we prepare students for assessments?
• Should we give re-do's?  How do we give re-do's?  Who gets to take a re-do?  How many times can a student re-do?
• What kind of feedback should we give on assessments?
• How much should the assessments count for?

When I try to think about the role of assessments in “real-life”  I immediately think of things like college exams, driving tests, standardized testing, etc.  But what about the life the rest of us live in? The best teachers in my school, they are the ones who collaborate well with others, take and share ideas with others, build off of the ideas of others, and work side by side with others, and continually reflect, evaluate and improve upon their own work. This is how I expect my students to learn in my classroom.  Knowledge, understanding and skills are developed through collaboration.  But when it comes time for assessment, I expect students to do it alone.

Teachers who close their classroom doors to isolate themselves from the rest of the faculty, and use their own ideas over and over and over again are not using best practice.  These types of teachers are often described as “traditional” and “old fashioned”.  And I think we all know these are not typically our best teachers.  But I think this is what we ask students to do in testing conditions.  Is it realistic to expect students not to get help and be resourceful on assessments?  We work hard to ask questions that are not “google-able” and encourage students to do ample research and use varied resources to formulate responses.

What if students who did the best on the assessments were the ones who were the most resourceful, who checked their work with other students, and then reviewed, revised, edited and reflected on their work?  Tests and isolated testing conditions are so artificial and don’t have any place in classrooms that strive for “authentic” assessment.

Why the Best Teachers Don't Give Tests is an excellent article discussing these very ideas.This is how I hope to change next year in my classroom. I want to stop giving tests, or at least seriously minimize their role in assigning overall performance measures, and assessing students skills to be resourceful and to create a dynamic product, work effectively in a team, think creatively, etc. I would love to hear from any of you who are already doing this or have good suggestions or resources to make it happen!