Constitutes Assessment? Why Is Assessment

¶ … constitutes assessment? Why is assessment important? From any experience, has assessment been a high priority? Why or why not?

On a very basic level, assessment can provide invaluable feedback for the teacher. Assessment fulfills two basic functions. The first, and most important from the student's point-of-view, is that performance on assessments demonstrates that the students are doing their work and exerting effort in their assignments -- or not. However, assessment is also important from the point-of-view of the teacher, as it reveals to the teacher whether his or her approaches to teaching are effective, and for which students. If the entire class seems not to comprehend certain basic, fundamental skills (versus one or two less-than-contentious students) the teacher may need to re-teach the lesson. Or if only a handful of students seem to understand what is going on, the teacher may need to incorporate more individualized attention for the struggling students into her lesson design, and use techniques that appeal to different styles of learning, for students with different types of learning patterns.

From an educator's point-of-view, formative assessments like quizzes and unit tests are often the most useful to gain a sense of students' level of comprehension. "Because they are spread out and occur after instruction every few weeks, months, or once a year, summative assessments are tools to help evaluate the effectiveness of programs, school improvement goals, alignment of curriculum, or student placement in specific programs" (Formative and summative assessments, 2010, NMSA). The information provided by standardized summative tests comes too late to make adjustments in teaching and often does not specifically test the content that is disseminated in class. But pressure on teachers is till constant to meet standardized benchmarks regarding summative assessments.

"Summative assessments happen too far down the learning path to provide information at the classroom level and to make instructional adjustments and interventions during the learning process. It takes formative assessment to accomplish this" (Formative and summative assessments, 2010, NMSA). Yet summative assessment, such as midterms, finals, and standardized state tests, are a part of life that must be dealt with. These assessments are extremely important because of their influence on district funding, and also administrators and parents' perceptions that the tests measure whether the school is doing its job or not, and conveying a good education to students. It is difficult not to become obsessed with them, given that one's performance as a teacher and quality as an educator is viewed through the rubric of standardized assessment.