Is Assessment Necessary?

This week we talked about a pretty controversial subject in the education world today. That is Standardized Testing. Should we have Standardized Tests? Should we have assessment at all? After some well thought conversations, the answers to all those questions is yes, yes, a million times yes.

We defined assessment as a measure of student learning. There are two types of assessment, formative and summative. Assessment is required, but doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a multiple choice test. No matter the form of assessment that you use it is very useful to provide feedback to your students. Assessment as an educator can be fun and creative and open to anything as long as you can asses that the student retained the information. The downside to assessment is that dreaded EOG as the end of the year. Teachers are encouraged to "teach the test" or drill in the "make an educated guess" tactic, but if you properly asses your students then they will have a better chance of succeeding on those state tests. I learned this week that the best way to teach, plan, and test is to form your assessment around the standards presented to you. Sounds pretty simple right?

According to the NCTS 3) teachers need to know the content they are teaching. That goes hand in hand with the assessment that follows. If you know the Standard Course of Study, then you can help build a great assessment piece to go along with it.

We had the opportunity to read a great interview from Grant Wiggins. He was asked a series of deep questions about assessment and his views on it. I loved his responses they were honest, but so thoughtful and true. He mentions how assessment makes us ask the hard questions if we are truly teaching, and if students are truly learning. One other aspect I really paralleled with was the point that yes assessment is a must, but it does not always have to be testing. That is where it is up to us as educators to make that call. This all relates to using integration in the classroom, and the fact that not every student learns best the same ways.

I am excited to see all my student's unique personalities and see what types of projects they connect best with. I feel like it is a learning experience for both the students as well as teachers.