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.