Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?

I really appreciated the “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning” reading. Assessment is an area that I’m familiar with as a student, but the handout was really my first “peek behind the curtain” as a future teacher.

One thing that I found particularly informative was the notion that evaluation should provide students with three things: (1) “a description of what they are doing and how well they are doing when they respond to literature”, (2) “a blueprint for potential improvement in their responses over time”, and (3) “ways of self-assessing so that they determine what they need to do to improve”. I think the idea that assessment is first and foremost about giving students a tool for growth is something that often goes overlooked. So often assessment is viewed primarily (or singularly) as a way for teachers, administrators, and institutions to evaluate students; rarely is it treated as a tool for the students themselves.

Another section I found thought provoking was the section that discussed “Reader-based” responses to student writing. As a student, when I get the chance to review a colleague’s writing, I typically respond to them from the position of a reader (partly because that’s simply what I am, and also) because I find it to be the least intimidating and confrontational form of response. To have someone else evaluating your writing is a vulnerable position to be in, and I’ve found that responding as a reader makes people more receptive to what I have to say and makes it more likely that I’ll give feedback that will actually be helpful. What I hadn’t considered before reading the handout was the fact that responding as a reader also invites the opportunity for the writer to come up with their own solutions to the issues that I point out. Rather than giving students a copy/paste solution to an issue, I can encourage them to thinking critically about the choices they have as writers.

While reading the Spokane Public Schools "Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook", I had a question that kept arising as I was reading: Should students be assessed based on what they can do, or what they actually do? This sprung from the district’s stance that assessment should not be based on a student’s average scores, but on scores that reflect a student’s current ability (most recent/highest). The article also discussed the debilitating effects of “zeros” and the demotivating nature of slow score growth when a zero is factored into an average score. I get where the Spokane School district is coming from, and being a psychology major, I definitely understand the crippling effect that a zero score can have on a student’s future behavior (I myself have endured the slow and exhausting trudge that follows such a score). I agree that including them often misrepresents a student’s ability, however I can’t help but wonder if there’s a better solution then simply ignoring anomalous or early low scores. As teachers, we need to be able to report scores in a way that actually represents what a student can do, but we also need to prepare them for life beyond high school, where missing and late and half-assed work will not be accepted.

I’m sure there are other proposed solutions to this dilemma, but one that I can think of comes from a personal experience in college. I was taking a class and simply and honestly forgot to take the first exam of the class, scheduled for a weekend. I had no excuse that I felt made it acceptable to ask for a retake; I had simply forgotten to take it, and so I quietly resigned myself to my fate of having to ace the rest of my work for that class. A couple of weeks later, the instructor asked me to speak with her after class. I had taken courses from her before, so she was familiar with my work. She said that she felt like my current grade in the course (including the zero) was not representative of my knowledge or the hard work that I was putting in to the class. I explained that I had forgotten to take the first test and did not feel right about asking to retake it. She said that leaving my grade where it was did not sit right with her and so we devised a plan in which I was to write a short paper covering the material of the first test and the grade I received would replace the zero I got on the test.

Here we have an example of a teacher who both knows her students and is mindful of the ill effects that low scores can have. By virtue of this, she made the choice to address the low score with her student directly and turned it in to an opportunity for the student to grow and maintain a score that accurately reflected what the student knew. I think the mindfulness and direct engagement of a teacher can have a greater effect on a student’s growth and outlook than simply choosing to ignore low scores that drop an average. I understand that this approach would be a tough one to implement at a district level, but as a teacher I plan to be aware of what my students can do and what they actually do, and to address any disparities between the two.