The meaningful assessment conversation

03Apr08

An article recently published at Edutopia (the George Lucas education Foundation) examines the history of assessment in schools, then continues to outline new ideas and implementations of assessment that are better designed to yield useful feedback.

“If we differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of all the learners, why aren’t we differentiating the test?” ~Stephen Dunbar

I’d be one of the first people to concede that current assessment techniques are archaic and misleading representations of a students understanding of a specific topic. Being able to select the correct answer out of a list of four possible answers, for a topic discussed 5 months ago, does little else than enforce rote memorization. It is an often stated point of view, but what we as a society are currently creating is a generation of individuals who are good at taking tests. As a student I made it my business to know how the test was being marked, what type of questions would be on it, then worked to answer them how I was expected to answer them. This had nothing to do with demonstrating what I had learned, it was all about getting a good grade on a test, because that number determined a heck of a lot — choice of University, scholarship money, and prestige in graduation.

I’m not sure what the answer is to the assessment debate, but the suggestions in this article are a great place to start. New assessments still need to gauge if a student knows the fundamentals — if you can’t answer a multiplication question then you won’t have much luck applying that skill to future applications. It’s not going to be as simple as changing the test. New assessment techniques will require us to develop a new perspective about how we view achievement, test scores, and the understanding and application of knowledge by students.