Assessment... headache?

What is the best combination of assessment to show us that students are to learning and to show students what they have learned (or not learned) so they can improve? As an adult, I expect someone who assesses my performance to explain to me what he saw and to discuss things I did well and ways I might improve. I take pride in my work and have always wanted to do the best job I could. Yet we seldom give children of any age this right. Why do we do this? Why do we rely on tests that are quick and easy to administer and grade? Why are we so willing to give a student a C?

When I taught high school Spanish, I was tired. I worked very hard planning lessons, teaching "from bell to bell", moving around students' desks answering questions and pointing out things they needed to remember and learn, and of course, grading. I graded in-class assignments, I graded projects, I graded homework, and I graded chapter tests and quizzes. Something inside me gets a little indignant when I read articles that say our schools need more formative assessment and less summative assessment, or better yet, that all projects should be about a student 's growth and improvement along a novice-expert trajectory, rather than about passing and failing. I think back to my days of hard work and grading and think to myself, how many more opportunities for formative assessment did my students need in order to improve? I think of the many students in my high school Standard Spanish classes who still got C's or below no matter how hard I worked to help them, no matter how much or what kind of feedback I gave. I thought about these students often and wondered what I could have been doing differently to help them. Ultimately, I learned to pin the responsibility on them for not caring and not studying hard enough. Was I wrong? I really don't think so. This is where theory meets practice: in theory, if a teacher can just give the right kind of assessments and feedback, every child will improve. The assumption is that every person is always motivated to find ways to improve their performance and that if given the right opportunities and assistance, they will. In practice, real human beings have many different motivations and issues that keep them from improving. Of course, I had many students who always did well, participated in class, asked questions, and moved along the novice-expert path in a pretty self-led way. They received the same kind of teaching from me. Should I give my activities and assessments credit for their performance? Or should I say it was because they were just brighter and better students? It seems one or both of these has to be responsible, and it also seems wrong to change the rules just because other students failed under the same teaching.

Nevertheless, I can't help but be allured by the promises that better assessments make. It is very important to feel self-efficate as a teacher, which entails being optimistic about what students can achieve given the right teaching approach. Improved content performance! Better satisfaction! More engagement in activities! Better work quality! I want to give all of this to my students. Now, it's just a matter of figuring out how do do all these performance-based assessments, finding or writing the rubrics, and planning the engaging, "authentic" activities. How hard can that be?

I am planning to spend my next couple of years teaching in experimentation with these popular assessment ideas and authentic activities. That has always been the way I have wanted to teach. Now that I have a clearer picture of what authentic activities and authentic assessment are, I think this will be somewhat easier. Still, the major issue is that nary a textbook can show me how to do this well... it's something I'll have to invent for myself. In theory, I'll be able to do that well. In practice, I know it will be very time consuming and energy-taxing, especially when I see that many students still don't improve much using this time intensive form of teaching. How will I know that it's all worth it? Mostly, I think I'll know from how it makes me feel as the teacher. If I am more excited about the kinds of interactions my students are having with one another in class (surrounding the subject matter, of course), if I see higher quality student work, if I see students who are better able to articulate and support their ideas, I'll be happy. I think I'll be able to feel it when engaged learning is really taking place, and it will be more exciting for everyone.

I just hope they still do well on those high-stakes norm and criterion referenced assessments at the end of the year... Hopefully the policy makers who push those assessments on schools are reading the same articles I am.