As Rick Stiggins writes in his 2008 Assessment Manifesto, “to support learning, assessments must move beyond merely informing the instructional decisions of teachers and school leaders to informing decisions made by students, too.” Providing formative feedback, allowing for, creating, and supporting the necessary accommodations and modifications, and including students in the process of defining how their learning will be measured, will give teachers, as well as, students the most accurate picture of student learning, allowing both to understand the adjustments they might make to positively impact learning.
This is one important takeaway from my Assessment Strategies course, and something I feel is a key element in a 21st Century classroom. The summative assessment task drives the entire learning experience. It defines the specifics students will need to be able to demonstrate, the formative guide posts along the way, and the engagement that student can have. With that in mind, how can students be excited about learning when the summative is a test? What does the learning experience look like to do well in a test? How can that compare in the mind of a student to building a skateboard, making a stop-motion animation, or creating a community garden?
I don’t mean to sound dismissive of tests. In fact, this was an important understanding I gained from this course, as well. I’ve only taught in independent, international, k-12 schools. They’ve all been considered relatively progressive. My approach has made extensive use of portfolio based assessment of open ended design tasks. I found little value in tests when teaching that course. I also recognize that test can be written for different purposes. In our coursework we looked at tool that can help teachers create tests that not only measure knowledge and understanding, but can also measure a learners ability to apply, and evaluate using that knowledge and understanding.
I better understand the importance of balance, and while for me that still means non-traditional assessment playing a major role, I see the value of adding more traditional assessment to the mix for an objective view of the data picture. This was perhaps the most eye opening idea for me in this course.
So, what do you do in your classroom? Do you tend to assess primarily with tests? Do you assess primarily through performance tasks? Do you feel you have a variety of types of assessment tasks? How do you decide on the most appropriate assessment method?
