A strong argument can be made that humans are constantly engaging in assessment. For example, we may think: I have to make it to work by 8:00 a.m. and it is now 7:30 a.m. I had better leave now or I won’t make it on time. And then later: Well, I was wrong. I needed forty-five minutes to get to work. Perhaps we engage in this mental conversation: Oh, here comes a puddle. I had better jump now or I will hit the water. Oops! Not enough distance on that jump! In fact, any time we clarify a goal, take action, and measure our efforts in relation to our goal, we are assessing. It is an incredibly natural process and a vital part of our decision making every day.
For assessment to be primarily embedded in the learning cycle, it must remain formative. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998) clarify the meaning: “[Formative assessment is] all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (pp. 7–8). Through daily learning experiences, we ask students to practice the individual skills and knowledge that build toward the learning goal so that, over time, students can synthesize those skills into deeper understanding.
Ideally, the impact of daily formative assessment is to increase the chances that decisions and actions meet goals. The consequences for not achieving goals on our first attempt are simply to learn, adjust, and try again. This cycle of goal setting, action, and reflection is naturally organic and part of the learning development that humans experience. Black and Wiliam (1998) assert the impact of formative assessment: “The research … shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning. The gains in achievement appear to be quite considerable … amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions” (p. 61). It is this kind of assessment that we recreate in our classrooms to promote student learning. As Cassandra Erkens (2009a) explains, “If we understand what we are trying to accomplish instructionally with each learner … we can use the assessment process to leverage the outcome” (p. 16). When we co-construct goals alongside students, invite them to take risks, and engage in actions that will serve as a springboard for reflection, we are fostering an assessment practice that supports hope and growth. This kind of learning environment meets the needs of both ourselves and our learners and softens the edges of classroom experiences.
When we feel students are ready, we engage in summative assessment—moments when we measure progress, consistency, and independent proficiency in relation to goals. These moments are akin to the learning “performance” or “game” and require synthesis and connection making inherent in the larger learning goals. According to Richard J. Stiggins and colleagues (2004), summative assessments are designed to measure student learning and “are used to make statements of student learning status at a point in time to those outside the classroom” (p. 31). When these summative moments become a celebration of hard work, practice, feedback, and engagement, the edges remain soft for teachers and students. When they do not reflect these things, summative assessment and reporting become unclear, unfair, and convoluted. In these instances, we may find ourselves falling back on magic math to tell us how students are doing. We look to our gradebooks filled with numbers, and we depend on the calculation of a single score after averaging, weighting, and converting to tell us whether learners are proficient or not. The number of variables involved in this type of process makes the resulting score have an unclear meaning. This approach can create stress and lack of confidence for all involved, ultimately producing a hard edge. Instead, we can engage in summative practices that truly validate growth and invite us to report progress with confidence and clarity to concerned stakeholders (parents and the school community).
Why and When Are We Assessing?
Assessment doesn’t have to be a bad word. In fact, assessment should be part of the learning cycle. If assessment just equates to a report card, we need to reconsider our practices. Assessment is something we are always doing—from preassessment to formative assessment, through feedback and relearning, to observation and demonstrations of learning—and essential in supporting the human need to grow. When assessment is solely used to rank and sort students, we are risking our learners’ emotional safety and potentially stagnating opportunities for their continual development, thereby creating a hard edge. Instead, with constant engagement in assessment, we can continue to make decisions about our instruction and how to invite even more learning from all students, regardless of their ranking. Assessment should be optimistic and hold the promise of success. We have to believe all students can and will learn and that this process is never-ending. This is the nature of a student-focused, learning-driven education system. DuFour (2015) explains, “In the end, creating a learning-focused culture requires an organization to answer this question: Are we here to ensure students are taught, or are we here to ensure that our students learn?” (p. 103). We may also ask ourselves whether we are here to measure past learning or to support future learning. Is our work about building walls and documenting who climbs over them, or making sure all our learners have the tools and supports to get over any wall life places in front of them?
Being clear about our reason for assessing ensures an assessment system that is multidimensional, inclusive, proactive, reliable, accessible, and future focused. If we need to know whether a student is ready for the learning goals we are about to introduce, we can design a preassessment, which occurs before learning. If we want to ascertain the effectiveness of our daily instruction, we craft smaller formative assessments, which occur during the practice and acquisition of learning. To plan for differentiation in our instruction that is responsive to student needs, we can create a common formative assessment, which we may deliver at a key point during the learning process in order to inform the next chunk of instruction. We can engage students in self-reflection and goal setting through self-assessment several times throughout the learning journey. If we want to capture learning after much practice and movement toward proficiency, we can engage students in a summative assessment. We can use reporting to communicate student progress toward learning goals at various key points during the year. Developing a clear understanding of why we are assessing, when it best makes sense to do so, and then sharing this understanding with our learners fosters emotional safety and is vital to ensuring soft edges for everyone.
Who Are We Assessing?
One could argue that assessment in a classroom measures students’ learning and the teacher’s instruction. When teachers use assessment to augment the relationship between the learning experiences they design and the impact of those experiences on the learner, it serves the needs of both parties. Understanding ourselves as teachers is as important as understanding our learners. If we are going to respond to student needs as a result of what our assessments tell us, we also have to know our own strengths and preferences. Engaging in personal reflection is key to developing instructional practices that meet the needs of students. We must reflect every day in preparation for receiving the assessment information we gather about our students so we respond in ways that nurture the needs of both ourselves and our learners.
Knowing our learners is important in signaling when and how we should assess their learning. We must find time to know our students in all their complexity. Making time to observe them while they learn, listen to them as they interact with their peers, and support them as they take risks is all part of figuring out who they are. Knowing their strengths and challenges helps ensure our assessment practices capture their understanding fully and avoid the unnecessary hard edge of bias or privileging. It is critical that we ensure we do not inadvertently ask students to demonstrate their understanding in ways that are contrary to cultural norms (for example, self-assessment is difficult for learners from cultures where talking about oneself is considered bragging). We also have to be careful we are not framing our prompts around contexts with which they may not be familiar (for example, asking students to calculate the area of a swimming pool when they have never gone swimming in anything besides a lake). Without an awareness of our learners and their personal contexts, we could privilege certain students who have had specific experiences over those who have not. We could also require assessment processes that offer an advantage to students who have access to materials, technology,