Last year, my school district decided on yet another new initiative - common assessments among grade levels in a building. At a meeting with the middle school ELA teachers, it was determined that we had a common reading assessment (the NWEA) and a common writing assessment rubric (Write from Beginning and Beyond), but there wasn’t a common assessment for language skills and standards. Within minutes, a random grammar assessment was found online, agreed upon to be slightly altered per grade level, and administered at the beginning of the year and the end of the year to show growth. I knew the assessment was bad, so bad that I gave the pre-test on a day when many of my students were gone on a field trip. By the end of the year, thankfully, the initiative had faded, and the post-test was never proctored. View the assessment below: Well, why was it so bad?
This assessment also goes against most of what I believe in terms of assessment. In my previous blog post, I wrote that an assessment is beneficial. It is, probably with the condition that the assessment is based on content my students are actively grappling with. By proctoring a pre-test, students are less likely to receive any feedback, and teachers are less likely to use the information for data and lesson planning purposes. This test also desperately needs a new form. It is too long, too open-ended, and covers too many topics. It’s unengaging and could easily be substituted with a group activity, a presentation, a writing assignment, etc. My biggest issue with this assessment was that it was considered and chosen in minutes as an easy-out. It was not given the time to be crafted, meticulously revised, or even discussed. Clearly, that was reflected in my attitude toward it, and my students felt the same way. Lastly, when comparing it to what the current researchers are saying, it doesn’t bode well. According to Lorrie A. Shepard (2000), “many teachers rely on a traditional, pre-test-posttest design to document student progress, but then do not use information from the pretest in instruction” (p.11). This is accurate in my experience using this test, as I skimmed through the results, but never actually evaluated or used the data it provided. This two-test method is decades old and does not reflect the current style of constructivist learning going on in today’s classrooms. Shepard goes on to say that teachers may want to consider using more continual checks for understanding instead of this two-test approach. That would be more helpful, as students could accomplish one topic at a time and not need to contribute the excessive amount of recall that this assessment requires. ReferencesShepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14. Retrieved from https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X029007004
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Jennifer StirlingThis is my #MAET journey! Thanks for reading! Archives
August 2020
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