It is clear that assessment has a bad reputation. Students may see it as verification of self-doubt or confirmation of a belief they hold about themselves and their value as learners. Teachers may see it as a necessary evil that manifests in nights of endless marking, comment making, and calculating. Parents may see it as a reflection of their child’s behavior, intelligence, or even their own parenting. The idea of assessment holds a strong connotation for each person based on prior experiences and conditioned responses over time.
There are many reasons why assessment seems at odds with a vision of nurturing students and teachers in our schools. Evaluating, grading, marking, testing, scoring—each word holds tremendous implications for teachers. As educators, we steel ourselves every day to wade into the world of assigning value to student learning. It can be an unpalatable process, and yet we collectively share an understanding that it makes up a large part of what we do in our classrooms. However, when we view assessment as a mandate, and when we view our actions of assessing as diminishing what we are able do in our classes and how much we are able to meet student needs, it is no wonder current assessment leaves much to be desired.
When I work with new teachers, I notice our conversation always seems to circle back to assessment: specifically, summative assessment (evaluation) and reporting. There is a tangible and collective panic to figure out how to engage in this process before discussing anything else. When I ask about this urgency, they share how much they worry about getting it right. They understand that assessment can immediately impact their relationship with students. They see reporting as accountability to parents and to the system as a whole.
I understand these beliefs and the anxiety that accompanies them. However, I am concerned for new teachers because of what assessment seems to represent for them and because of how they feel about it. There is very little confidence when they speak of designing assessment events that reflect learning. I wonder what has happened over the course of these young teachers’ educational experiences to have fostered this degree of anxiety and pressure when it comes to assessment. Perhaps their personal experiences with assessment shaped certain perceptions about what it means for teachers and learners. Maybe the tremendous swell in public debate surrounding accountability, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation has added to their anxiety. Simply searching the Internet elicits a vast selection of headlines with high emotional weight: “Stop the Testing Circus” (Rotherham, 2015), “Teachers’ Unions Fight Standardized Testing, and Find Diverse Allies” (Taylor, 2015), “High School Seniors Aren’t College-Ready” (Camera, 2016), “Teacher Evaluation System Is Latest Education Battleground” (Bowie, 2014). There is rarely a day that passes when the fight for ownership of education doesn’t make itself known in mainstream media. The stakes may seem very high to these new teachers.
Students also may feel conflicted by assessment. I hear their frustration with assessment practices and their assertion that there is no way to advocate for their learning needs. I see their reluctance to explore feedback, and I hear their desire to have their work be valued or assigned a number because this is what they think school is about—that this number is the only thing that matters in the end. I worry about our students, and I wonder how their schooling has shaped them and their beliefs about assessment. I worry about the degree to which a single number impacts their perception of their ability and their options for the future. I have heard students declare a lack of ability in a specific area based on a single assessment result. I have seen students become painfully discouraged after an assessment event and refuse to even discuss the result and options for future learning. I have heard students mutter, “I failed,” while handing in an assessment, even though the word fail has not been used in their classroom all year. I have retrieved students from bathrooms after they have become ill in anticipation of an assessment event. Assessment is causing stress for these students, and this stress reflects perceptions about assessment and how it works. If these patterns are not addressed, the stress will continue, potentially reducing achievement, optimism, and joy in learning through assessment.
Assessment has taken on a more sinister connotation in the larger landscape of education and politics. Terms like high stakes, standardization, tracking, academic dishonesty, retention, and teacher evaluation have shifted the meaning of assessment for many people, including teachers, students, and families. Sometimes it is hard to imagine that assessment could come to any good inside our schools anymore.
Nevertheless, I assert optimism for the word assessment and everything it could mean. I believe in assessment because I know that when used correctly, it is one of the most powerful tools available for holistically supporting students on their learning journeys. I believe in assessment because I love learning and the gift it offers human beings. I am optimistic about assessment because I love our schools and the people who live large portions of their days inside them. I see schools as places of joy and curiosity; wonder and practice; challenge and support. I love the relationships that flourish inside our buildings. I have nothing but hope that we can nurture schooling experiences where the focus continues to rest on these relationships among all people in schools as well as the relationships between the students and their own learning stories. I love that assessment can support these learning stories, build relationships, and foster curiosity, joy, efficacy, and healthy challenges for adults and students alike.
Introduction
Shortly after I began working as an educational consultant, I was driving to the airport with a colleague after we had spent three days facilitating a session on assessment with a large group of teachers. It had been challenging work, and I was trying to make sense of the experience by talking it through with my colleague. I was mostly concerned with how challenged the participants seemed to feel about the assessment design processes we were working through. They seemed burdened by so many stresses—multiple sets of standards; state testing as well as district assessments; and learners who were coming to school hungry, tired, and disengaged. Discussing assessment as an essential component of the learning process seemed to really challenge their beliefs about the work they were doing and their roles as educators.
As a Canadian, I was also trying to make sense of the education paradigm in the United States and the implications of this paradigm on my message and my facilitation. My colleague patiently explained the history of U.S. education reform and the resulting assessment reform. It was a long drive to the airport, and we talked through many important aspects of our work. My own experiences in coming to understand assessment had been personally and professionally challenging, and I already had a sense of the difficult nature of this topic, but I began to see that assessment was truly loaded with misunderstanding and harsh realities for teachers and students.
As we drove, we passed through rock formations alongside the highway. The light shifted over the red igneous cliff faces as approaching rain clouds began to alter the shadows along the edges of the stone. It made me think of the lines and edges that our education system has created in relation to assessment; the rules and processes that, to many teachers, seem static and non-negotiable. I started to think about the shifting effects of light on the edges of the rock, depending on the time of day, the weather, or the perspective of the viewer, and I began to wonder if it were possible to shift our view of assessment in the same way—by changing the conditions under which it is viewed and by changing the perspectives of the viewers. Would these kinds of shifts soften the edges of our relationship with assessment? Would they change how we see assessment and how our students experience it?
On that drive with my colleague, I began to recognize that assessment had taken on a solid form in the minds of the teachers with whom we had worked. It was a thing, an entity. It seemed vast and unmanageable all at the same time. It seemed like when teachers interacted with it, they felt a small pain, as if cut by the edge of the practice itself. I began to think that the work we were doing with these teachers was to take this hard edge of assessment and round it or smooth it out, so when teachers began to work with it, it would no longer hurt. I knew we needed to shift the perception of assessment as a thing into assessment as a process. We had to take that hard line or edge and turn it into something that was approachable, flexible, and manageable.