Assessment Methods and Text Readability in Education

Introduction: Assessment as a Universal Experience

Personal experience with assessments is an ongoing and continuous life event; every individual on earth is either assessing or being assessed in almost every interaction one can think of. Assessment is especially important in educational communities. Heeneman, Oudkerk Pool, Schuwirth, Vleuten, and Driessen (2015) found that most experts agree with the viability of student assessments, noting that "it is widely acknowledged that assessment can affect student learning" (p. 487). If what Heeneman et al. found is true, then assessing student progress — or lack thereof — through the use of assessments benefits students by helping them learn.

Personal Philosophy on Assessments

My personal experience with being assessed and with creating assessments is quite extensive. Throughout my educational career I have taken — and done quite well overall — a large number of assessments across an equally large number of courses, clinics, and programs. Some of the most effective assessments I can recall are those that had me interacting verbally with the instructor. These interactive assessments were much more beneficial to me, and I cannot be the only person to believe so. A recent article confirms that "a 5th-grade teacher at an independent boy's school gives a first-person account of how her constant assessments and requirement that her students be active participants in their own learning gainsays the need for high-stakes, standardized testing" (Suskind, 2015, p. 38). The teacher believes that her type of assessments are intertwined, interactive, and instructive, and my personal experience provides substance to her assertion. I would personally much rather stand in front of a group of students, teachers, or administrators and be assessed on my performance and knowledge than take a standardized test consisting of yes/no questions.

I prefer assessments that are objective and allow for creativity — for example, demonstrating the knowledge I have gained from reading a particular text by verbally explaining what I learned. Since I am quite capable of describing and articulating my thoughts and thought process, the type of assessment that allows me to do so provides an advantage over assessments that require exact and specific answers to mundane questions. That said, I would expect that many students would prefer being tested on specific answers to specific questions. This belief is grounded in the recognition that there are different learning styles and that the majority of students learn best through visual methods — in other words, they see the answer and then remember it.

Standardized Testing vs. Creative Assessment

Schools should be — and I believe most of them are — hotbeds of innovation and creativity. That schools offer standardized testing on such a large scale belies that belief. Individual classrooms and teachers are much more capable of providing assessments in a creative environment than are the schools and school districts where they work. One of the main reasons teachers have more options available to them is the responsibility they are given to teach "to the test." Some teachers interpret teaching to the test as disseminating specific questions likely to appear on the exam, while others teach students to think for themselves. It would be interesting to determine which method is most effective over the long run. My personal belief is that we should teach students to learn and to think — not to answer standardized questions with rote material.

What I have already learned about assessing types of text is that such assessments are very subjective in nature, and that a compare-and-contrast approach probably works best for determining whether a student has gained the knowledge and comprehension necessary.