Why Assess?
Student assessments occur for many reasons. Diverse assessment instruments and approaches provide information and results for a variety of purposes. No single assessment method can provide a comprehensive view of a student’s or a group of students’ achievement. Every classroom continually needs to use a multiple and varied assessments, some of which require that students use their content knowledge and skills to create their own responses or to show their work. Assessment results are used in Rhode Island for the following:
- Student progress monitoring
- Screening and diagnosis
- Curriculum and instructional decision-making
- Program evaluation
- Local, state, and federal accountability
- Demonstration of proficiency in the High School Diploma System
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Who Assesses?
While teachers are often the assessors of student learning, they are not the only ones who can provide assessments. Students review and refine their own work, as well as the work of their peers. They determine the extent to which the work is of sufficient quality and the degree to which all of the requirements of the assignment or task have been addressed. Parents and community partners are also involved in assessing student learning. They assess informally when reviewing homework. They assess more formally when serving as part of a team judging senior projects or exhibitions. Other assessments for our students are also provided by users who are external to the Rhode Island K-12 educational system, such as the SAT or community college placement examinations.
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When to Assess?
Assessment can and should occur anywhere in the learning process: before (to see what students already know), during (are they understanding what is being taught), atthe end (the completion of a unit, semester, or course) and much later (such as the SAT or college placement exams) The nature of the assessment will vary, depending on why and when it is occurring in the learning process. Similarly, while one type of assessment can be used for certain purposes, it may not be appropriate for others.
EXAMPLE: Some assessments, such as observations, provide information while learning is underway (in the middle of a lesson). Observations indicate how well students understand a new idea that is being introduced. The results of these observations can be used immediately by the teacher to continue or to change the next steps in the teaching process. However, these observations do not provide enough information about the overall achievement of that student during the entire time period.
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What to Assess?
Determining what to assess depends on the purpose of the assessment and how the results will be used. In general, assessments indicate how well a student or students are learning or have already learned important knowledge and skills and how to apply them. In Rhode Island, what students should know and be able to do in reading, writing, mathematics and science at each grade level or grade span are described in the Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) and the Grade Span Expectations (GSEs). Other content areas also have state and/or national documents that provide details about knowledge and skills students need to acquire.
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How to Assess?
Decisions about which assessment instrument or approach to use depends on the different combinations of answers to the basic who, what, when and why assessment questions.
Formative and Summative Assessments
Formative Assessments are assessments that provide the teacher and students with information about student learning during the teaching-learning process. They supply information that helps teachers know whether students are understanding what is being taught so that they can change, reteach or teach differently. Formative Assessments also give students an opportunity to ask questions for clarification and understanding before a summative assessment is given.
Summative Assessments provide results that reflects the entire designated period of learning and are administered following the completion of a major activity or time period (end of unit, monthly, quarterly, end of semester or course).
EXAMPLE: The need to monitor student progress in reading could lead to a decision by a teacher to use a record of oral reading (formative assessment). This assessment details a student’s reading behaviors as he/she reads text orally. This same need to monitor student progress in reading could lead to a decision by the principal to have teachers administer a set of pre-selected text to all students in grade 2 four times a year (summative assessment).
Types of Assessment Instruments and Techniques
Determining the purpose for an assessment is the first step when deciding what kind of assessment to use. Then, it is important to consider how formal, or standardized, the design of the test instrument or technique, the administration conditions and the scoring process need to be in order to get valid and reliable results for that purpose. Assessment approaches can be divided into two groups based on the degree of standardization:
- those that have been developed by the district or a group of teachers or companies; and standardized in terms of content, and/or administration procedures; and/or scoring procedures -called formal assessments; and
- those that have been developed by a classroom teacher for use in his or her classroom -called informal assessments.
Some approaches could be either formal or informal, depending on the degree of standardization of content, administration procedures, or scoring procedures. Indeed, some teacher-created activities or tests are quite standardized on all three of these aspects. This table provides only a few examples that distinguish assessments according to how standardized they are or could be.
|
FORMAL/STANDARDIZED |
INFORMAL/CLASSROOM |
|
Norm-referenced tests |
Oral questioning and interviews |
|
Criterion-referenced tests |
Writing samples |
|
Textbook tests |
Seatwork |
|
Questionnaires |
Homework |
|
Exhibitions |
Demonstration |
|
Capstone projects |
Peer assessment |
|
End-of-course tests |
Observation |
|
Quarterly district tests |
Self-assessment |
|
Rating scales |
On-demand performance assessments |
|
Structured performance assessments |
Collections of a student’s work |
|
Portfolios |
Teacher developed quizzes and tests |