Assessment: The struggle and our hope!

Assessment is and always has been a hot topic in education primarily because the teacher, with a huge amount of sacred trust, is bestowed with the absolute power to evaluate, assess and assign grades to our children.  As parents, we know all too well the lasting impact a letter grade can have on a child. It can open doors to acceptance, affirmation and success and it can also demotivate, discourage and deny entrance.

It is clear the educational community is well aware that change in assessment practice is in the air. The "Assessment conversation" is happening in the halls of all our schools. We say it’s about time to start asking the difficult question. Is assigning letter grades and percentages really helping our students achieve to their fullest potential?  The predominant answer to this question appears to be a resounding … NO!  So, what are we going to do about it?

The old arguments are not good enough anymore: “I would like to try new ways but... the system does not allow it”, and “I don’t have enough time”, and “the system often requires us to use a percent, and parents want to know.” These are only a few of the excuses we give as educators. We are doing students a disservice by using numbers and percentages to define success. Far too often, our assessments have the opposite effect: they demotivate, instill frustration and cause disengagement. The challenge we face is to change the way we as a learning community view assessment. It is a tough task, but not an impossible one.

Making the distinction between formative and summative assessments is the first part of the process. For many teachers, this will involve a significant change in practice. From the outside looking in, the shift from assessment of learning to assessment as and for learning is easy to see, however, from the practitioner’s view inside the classroom, the struggle continues. Dylan William, 2012 asserts that “Assessment is the biggest lever we have to raise student achievement”.  We need to continue to support teachers in this struggle and remind them of the overwhelming importance of their good work. 

When teachers teach classrooms full of diverse learning needs, and they engage the use of rubrics, detailed feedback and peer & self-assessments, they open the door to different expressions of learning: exit interviews, presentations, graphic organizers, stories etc.  The students are more likely to value the process and become highly motivated architects of their learning. It is not uncommon to hear these students say “this made me like school again!” or “I like how I can choose” or “I didn’t know I could do that!” Although every classroom is different and every teacher has a different style a key goal of every teacher is to have engaged students who are passionate about learning.

As Clark, Owens, and Sutton (2006) state, “By adopting assessment for learning practices the focus shifts to the learner. Teachers will find that their students’ performance will improve because they are more likely to see themselves as active, participating learners. More students will be successful in achieving the curricular outcomes as the teachers learn how to target their lessons and help the students identify problem areas in their own work.”

Our hope is that assessment as and for learning becomes the standard for all teaching and learning.

Stayed tuned for next week’s blog where we address the need to help our parents navigate the change in assessment practices so they can see the benefits of assessment as and for learning for their children.