Different Types of Assessment

When I was in elementary school, I had a very difficult time with the traditional pencil and paper quiz and worksheet routine. I didn't dislike school, I just never felt connected to these types of assessment. So, when I was browsing around, looking for different types of assessment approaches, I noticed one that caught my eye. Many of my professors even use this type of assessment approach. The use of a journal can be very beneficial in a plethora of different ways.

Many of our students will be good at traditional tests. But, many of them will be like me, and crave outlets to expose our knowledge. A journal is a way for students to be creative. A journal might be the only place some of our students will be able to elaborate on feelings they have. It gives them a chance to feel comfortable, and talk without being criticized. i feel journals have a lot to offer, and they are very easy for teachers to go through and assess.

A journal is quiet simple; or you could make it much more complex. Some teachers literally just have students write in them. The fact that they consistently write gives them full credit. Other teachers are more thorough. in some cases, they are graded based on a type of writing, or a certain topic. In other cases, they are graded based on length or effectiveness. In any case, it allows students to use their writing instead of close-ended questions to show their intelligence, creativeness and style. In my opinion, having a class full of creative students is far greater than a class full of good answers.

Assessment News from Around the Country

Made famous by the Save Our Schools march and protests from famous individuals such as Matt Damon, an assessment-related topic that has made headlines for months is students' test scores effecting teacher evaluation. The Obama Administration created Race to the Top, a competition that challenged school and assessment reform and awarded funding to those who created the best ideas. As a result, many states adopted new large-scale assessment programs and revamped their teacher evaluation programs. These teacher evaluation systems incorporated a focus on students' test scores as grounds for assessment, spurring a wave of protest from teachers and policy makers. Opposers protest that using student test scores as an evaluation method have no scientific backing to support use of such tactics. They also argue that test-based evaluations had led to a multitude of negative consequences, including narrowing curriculum, a rise in cheating, and a drop in teacher engagement. Many argue that No Child Left Behind and other test-based evaluation systems forced a teaching to the test approach or else schools fall behind in funding and are labeled inadequate. The Obama Administration remains confident that student test scores are an important factor to consider when evaluating teachers but should not be the only important factor, such as principal evaluation, peer-teacher observations, tests of pedagogical knowledge, review of teaching portfolios, and even parent or student ratings. These, coupled with student test scores, should create a thorough teacher evaluation and assessment program that more closely resembles the effectiveness of teachers.

As previously mentioned in this blog, the SMARTER balanced assessment was a product of the Race to the Top initiative created by the Obama Administration and the US Department of Education. It aligns itself with the Common Core Standards of Education, a multi-state collection of standards that focuses on preparing American students for college and careers (corestandards.org). A total of 29 states (including Connecticut) have adopted this system of assessment because they believe the question types, various items, and the way the test is taken will more closely reflect what is happening in schools. Since 29 states have signed on to administer this test, states will become directly comparable and adjustments can be made to reflect the needs of those students.

Another multi-state form of assessment created as a result of the Race to the Top initiative is the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). Like the SMARTER balanced system, PARCC aligns itself with the Common Core Standards, as can be distinguished by the "Readiness for College and Career" portion of it's name. Currently 24 states have signed on to adopt this system of assessment. The vision of the PARCC system is that it provides deep and meaningful assessments that accurately prepare and assessment students' readiness for college and careers (parcconline.org). Interim assessments allow teachers to directly tie their teaching in the classroom to the goals of the PARCC assessment program throughout the school year. Technology is also an important component of this system as well and allow students to complete the assessments via computer.

Each of the two newly developed assessment programs aims to create a more reliable and demonstrative indicator of student success, which will in turn become more reliable when rating teacher effectiveness in relation to student test scores. These topics are and will continue to remain in the news across the country, especially with a presidential election coming up that has the power to once again adjust how we conduct assessments and teacher evaluations.

Alternate Assessment

As pre-service teachers and former students, we are all used to the typical “pencil and paper” assessment techniques, especially when it comes to mathematics. Although these assessments provide us with a number grade to show the student’s knowledge, we should not be relying so heavily on these and more importantly, solely on these. In my opinion, it is very important to assess and see where are students are at, so we as teachers can adjust and/or assist anyone who needs extra help or an alternate way of seeing something. In order to fairly assess our students, we should be providing them with various different types of assessments and then seeing from there how our students are doing.

When I went to research information on alternate assessment, I came across a quote that I feel holds very true. "Tests are important quantitative assessment tools, but in and of themselves do not constitute the totality of assessment" (Webb, 1992, p. 663). As I mentioned before, tests are a great way to see numerically how a student is scoring, but what if some students are horrible test-takers? What if they get nervous and score so much higher on take-home tests? We have to keep in mind that each and every student works differently, and by using only one type of assessment technique, we may be inaccurately assessing him or her.

Some alternate assessments I believe we should focus on more include: portfolios, sketches and records, constructions, written descriptions, records, journals, self-assessment, etc. These may not be traditional, but they definitely provide insight to the teacher as how the student is performing. Also, observation is key. We may not even think of observing our students in the classroom as an assessment technique, but this in my opinion, is one of the most important tools we can use. This does not mean that we observe every student all the time; we can even designate a certain day to one student and take notes on how he or she is throughout the day. With this, though, we have to keep in mind that we may be observing a student on a good or bad day; one daily observation is not enough. It is obvious that a bunch of other assessment techniques exist besides tests. I feel as if teachers should be taking more advantage of these alternate forms in order to fairly assess their students.

SMARTER Balanced Assessment

As a preservice teacher in Connecticut, I grew up with the CMTs and the notion that when I graduated, my students would take the CMTs. Little did I know, a new national assessment would be coming. Currently, the NAPE is the only nation-wide assessment that is only given to a sample of students. One controversial idea is the possibility of state by state comparison, in addition to the typical town by town ranking. Will this be a reality? We will not know until all states are a part of this consortium and the assessment is used in all states. 


The SMARTER Balanced is based on the Common Core Standards and is geared for grades 3-8 and 11. The idea is to determine where students fall on a continuum of career and college preparedness. English/Language Arts and Math will be included, as those are two main subjects in the Common Core. There will also be optional formative assessments included. There will be fewer questions than the CMT that need to be answered because this computer based test will change the level of each question to be specific to each student. The question levels will change with each question answered correctly/incorrectly. The test is said to have more than just multiple choice questions like many standardized tests. There will be multiple choice, extended constructed response, and performance tasks. In addition, there will be technology enhanced questions to make the most of the computer based aspect of the assessment.


Taking in this information, many questions arise. Will the computer based aspect of the test may leave some students from low-socioeconomic communities at a disadvantage? Do the performance tasks involved in the SMARTER Balanced Assessment attend to the science principles of inquiry and investigative thinking, like the Embedded Tasks that are currently used in CT? Many of these questions cannot be answered currently as this idea spreads across the nation. For now, I think concluding that many changes to the educational field are ahead of us, at both a state and national level.  

Assessment Techniques

There are many ways to assess students' understanding and learning.  Different types are used at different times in the learning process.  Pre-assessment happens before the teacher begins teaching a concept to see what students already know and if some students may have already mastered the material and need an alternative plan. Teachers can use this to design their lessons according to student needs.  This is an essential step that many teachers do not value as much as other types of assessments.  Teachers can use traditional tests as well as student surveys or students questions or comments about a given topic.  They could also look at previous scores that will indicate how they performed in that subject or area in the past.

The second type of assessment that occurs during teaching and learning is formative assessment.  While the teacher is teaching a unit they should design activities and monitor student work and projects to make sure students are understanding what they are teaching.  Teachers can then adjust their lessons and review information as needed.  There are a variety of ways to assess including observation, worksheets, quizzes, and response to questions.

The last type of assessment is summative and happens after instruction.  This documents what students have learned and understand.  Achievement tests, projects, essays, and debates are a few examples of summative assessments.  These are usually sorted into various assessment methods:  selected-response, constructed-response, teacher observation, student self-assessment.  Each method assess a different level of understanding.  Some types may assess declarative knowledge such as selected-response where students choose a response.  Constructed-response may require procedural knowledge because students may need to create something using their knowledge.  It could also assess deep understanding.  Examples of constructed-response assessments include short answer questions, essays, performance tasks such as a speech or presentation.  Teacher observation is another way students may be assessed and could include oral questions and observation of students working in groups.  This could assess declarative, procedural, or deep understanding depending on what the teacher observes.  Another type is student self-assessment where students evaluate themselves in the form of a reflection or survey or portfolio.  Again, this could require any of the three types of knowledge depending on the complexity of the task.

Tips for providing more effective feedback

I am choosing to post on how to provide more effective feedback to students because I find it very important. When a teacher would grade my paper as an A- and offer no suggestions to improve my grade or even how I obtained that grade, I would always get frustrated. While grades are important and have their place in education, students learn more from descriptive feedback rather than just a grade slapped on a paper.

I think that the book we use for this class is very helpful in suggesting ways to give more effective feedback. It states “feedback is always adaptive. Effective feedback is more than keeping in mind a few important principles such as keep feedback brief and individualized…Rather, good feedback depends on appropriate teacher decision making and responses to students contingent on several important variables.”(Page, 135) In summary, this quote is saying that as a teacher in order to provide effective feedback you must consider the whole picture, including how the student learns, what the goals of the assignment are, prior work, and even how the other students in the class preformed. The book lists more specific areas that you should be conscious of when giving feedback. They are: the amount of feedback you give, the timing in which you give it, the mode or how you give the feedback (verbal, oral, or demonstrative), the audience you are giving feedback too, and the type of task that you are giving feedback about. I will focus on the amount of feedback that is helpful to students, the amount of time that you should try to give feedback within, and how to give the best feedback for certain tasks.

In general, it is important to give specific and descriptive feedback so that your students know exactly what they did well or need to improve on. However, you do want to be careful not to give too much feedback, instead just focus on one or two important points that you want the student to do better. I know in my clinic placement when my cooperating teacher corrects my students’ sentences instead of correcting every word that is misspelled she will focus on a couple that she thinks are important for the student to know. My cooperating teacher may also focus on different skills when correcting sentences she may notice that a student is writing all their Ks backwards, and also misspelling words. She might choose to only focus on writing the ks the right way today and come back to the other skill tomorrow. If she was to focus on all of the errors, the child could become overwhelmed with corrections and begin to feel as thought there are so many errors there is not point in trying because they will never get it right.

Most of the time it is important to give immediate feedback to students. If teachers wait too long students begin to forget what they actually did on the task. Giving immediate feedback also allows students to use the feedback constructively while they may still be learning information. However, when considering the timeframe of when to give feedback teachers should also consider the type of task and the audience that they are giving feedback to. Complex tasks, and students who are higher-ability benefit from delayed feedback. By delaying when the feedback is given students are give the opportunity to remove themselves from their work and will be able to reflect on their performance when they receive feedback with a clear mind.

Finally, as I have touched upon before different tasks need to receive feedback in different ways. If the student is participating in a performance task it is best for them to receive feedback immediately so that they can correct their performance right then and there. We already know that for complex tasks and high-ability learners feedback should be delayed. The converse of this is true for simple learning tasks. For them, feedback should be immediate as well as when students are learning a difficult new task. This type of feedback allows students to accomplish the tasks better because they know what they need to work on and what they are doing well.

The Role of Assessment in Teaching

As the first official blog post, I wanted to begin by highlighting some of the important ideas about the role that, according to my beliefs, assessments should play in teaching. While there is not one assessment that works well with all units, lessons, or populations of students, there are certainly assessments that serve purposes based on various objectives and learning goals that teachers set prior to teaching. As McMillan explains in her text, "The right kind of assessment, and the manner in which it is integrated with teaching, can have dramatic effects on how much is learned and how well something is performed" (p. 2). As we, as teachers, design a wide variety of assessments for our students, we must keep in mind that all assessments must not only provide us with information, but support and enhance student learning as much as possible.

As a pre-service teacher, I can imagine that reality of the world of teaching, despite my preparation and experience, is going to be chaotic and hectic when I first enter into it. Teaching is fast-paced, demanding, and very complex; decisions are made ALL the time through interactions. McMillan explains that teachers make anywhere between 1000 and 1500 interactions per day! Because of this, assessment is crucial in the process of decision making. In order to best meet the needs of students while consistently challenging them, teachers need to know what students already know, what they are learning, and what they still need to know. To find out this information about students, teachers should be using preassessments (prior to teaching to find out what students already know), formative assessments (during teaching to monitor progress, give feedback, and guide future instruction), and summative assessments (after assessments to find out what students have learned and can do). It is through these forms of assessment that assessment and teaching drive and guide one another.

Lastly, I wanted to discuss the importance of authenticity of assessments and the value of feedback. Whenever possible, assessments should be created in such a way that they focus on knowledge and skills that are "exhibited in real-life settings outside school that depict the student's best performance" (p. 16). This is because, as students feel that assessments are authentic and realize their importance to learning, they become more motivated. So how do teachers create authentic assessments? Teachers can create authentic assessments by involving students in the assessment-creating process. This process includes writing questions, asking questions along the way, and evaluating their own and the work of others. Students should also be provided with feedback about their achievement and progress so that "assessment for learning becomes as important as assessment of learning" (p. 16). When assessment for learning occurs, students understand that their feedback is based on their ability to achieve goals (presented to them beforehand). Students also become responsible for their learning, confidence is built, engagement increases, and instruction can be adjusted according to assessments before, during, and after instruction occurs.

(By: Christie Attanasio, Sec. 1)

Welcome!

Welcome to the UCONN Assessment blog where preservice teachers attending the Neag School of Education's Integrated Bachelor's and Master's program provide tips on a variety of assessment topics.  Soon to come are posts on:

• Preparing students for high-stakes assessments
• Discussing test results with parents
• New developments with the Smarter-balanced assessment
• Assessment news from around the country
• How to hold a data meeting
• Assessment techniques
• Grading methods
• Developing scoring rubrics
• Portfolio assessment
• Performance assessmnet
• Tips for providing more effective feedback, and
• Other interesting developments in the field of assessment