ASSESSMENT - WEEK 12

As this cartoon demonstrates, the nation as a whole has become test crazy. We judge everything by a serious or numbers, or a score on a test. However, that is just what they are some arbitatry number that really does not mean anything. It really does not tell us how much the student has really learned. There are too many factors that go in to a simple test to determine if they are accurately jugdeging how much a student has learned. Some of the factors that can affect test scores are, how the test was worded. If it is worded incorrectly it can confuse the student and we may not really be assessing what we wanted to assess. Also, some students may not read well, so are we assessing their knolwedge of the subject, or are we assessing how well they read? Also, what if they were not taught what was on the state test, the teacher may have taught something completely different then what was suppossed to be in the curriculum. Another problem that may arrise in traditional assessement are enviornmental factors; was it noisy, was it too hot or too cold, was it too quite, was the student sick, did they not eat dinner the night before, or breakfast the morning of, is there a divorce going on at home?, are they wondering if their parents will be able to pay the heating bill?.....There are just far too many factors that can play into traditional assessment.

The other problem with traditional assessment is, what is it doing to prepare the student for the real world. How often are asked to take a test for a job? Or for a promotion? More often then not you will be graded on the quaility of your work. Do you write well, do you communicate well with others, do you have good gramar and spelling in your reports, can you think on your feet, can you make good decisions. These are the types of thing we need to grade our students on. We need to give them essays, projects, make them work in groups so that they have to communicate and work towards a common goal, we need to assess them on things that will be beneficial to thenm in the future. Even as they move on to college and further along in their education they will be graded based more on their reading and writing skills, and their ability to make connections then if they can pass some test.

So what does that mean for us as teachers?? For one thing it means more work. We need to sit down and actually grade papers and read through essays and think about what our students are saying, rather then simply checking if a mulitpile choice question is correct or not. However, these authentic assessments are more beneficial to our students and will really be a better judge of our skill set as an educator.