Week

7 Task and Reflection on Assessment

All teachers assess their students as an integral part of regular instruction process. How
teachers use assessment process is the key element to how effective the instruction process is?
Teachers use all kinds of assessment to inform the instruction process such as observations,
placement, diagnostic, baseline, formative, and summative assessments. All of these
assessments serve different purposes, however, no matter what kind of assessment is used,
assessment must be reliable and valid in order to serve their real purpose.
A teacher must use a combination of assessments to make a fair judgment of her students
progress and achievement. Different assessments assess different areas/aspects of instruction
process. Teachers assess cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains when they use a
combination of assessments. While it is important to assess a students body of knowledge or
conceptual understanding, it is also important to assess the thinking process, skills, and attitude
of students to make objective and fair judgment of the effectiveness of the teaching process.
Assessment should be planned during the course of instruction so that it is aligned with the
curriculum and learning targets. Formative assessments help teachers in planning the
instruction by informing them about the continuous progress, their students are making while
summative assessments give teachers more quantitative data on how much their students
achieved over a period of time.
Some factors that should be kept in mind while planning instruction are:
1. How closely related are assessment to the learning targets/standards?
2. How are the assessments contributing to the report cards?
3. Exactly when should the assessments of different kinds be conducted to get the best
outcome?
4. How should the assessments be designed for students with learning
difficulties/disabilities?
5. What factors might make an assessment invalid or unreliable?
6. What purpose is a particular kind of assessment serving?
7. In what ways is an assessment contributing to assessing cognitive, affective, and
psychomotor domains?
However, no matter what form of assessment is used by the teachers, it is extremely important
to make sure that they are graded with the upmost objectivity in mind, so a fair judgment of
true student-progress can be made.Some assessment tools that are used by teachers are

Week 7 Task and Reflection on Assessment

teacher-made assessments, published assessment that accompany text-book resources, and

large-scale achievement tests/high stakes standardized tests. Teacher made assessment are
useful, but a judgment on teacher-made assessment about their validity and reliability can not
be established fully. High-stakes standardized tests are used to determine how students from
one State may stack up against another State or nation-wide. Some large-scale tests such as
PISA, TIMMS, and PIRLS are used to assess students achievement internationally.
The focus on high-stakes testing in the recent years has become rather complex and
controversial. Since standardized tests are mostly multiple-choice, it is arguable if such tests
assess higher-order thinking skills. Teachers are forced to teach to the test because they want
their students to be able to score well on these tests. However, teachers have to narrow down
their curriculum and only teach the skills which will be assessed on these high-stakes tests,
leaving out many valuable skills that should have been taught.
While constructing assessments, teachers should use multiple-choice items and essay type
questions in order to assess students higher thinking processes as well as their language skills
and presentation of ideas. The best way to score essay type questions is to use rubrics in order
to objectively score individual performance of students with utmost objectivity. Same rubrics
are also called checklists and rating scales. Checklists and rating scales provide students with
specific feedback and allow teachers to score students while keeping the process fair and
objective. Finally, teachers keep all the assessment data to effectively grade their students
performance. There are no set guidelines for grading students work. In fact, grading criteria
differs from teacher to teacher. Some schools provide teachers with clear guidelines on how to
grade their students and what kind of assessments can be used to include in the grading
process, and some teachers may have to devise their own. Hence, the debate on effective
grading remains controversial and complex.
My Reflection
Although assessment is a controversial topic in general, however, it is still a very important
piece of instruction process because not only student-progress/achievement must be
communicated to both students and their parents, but it is also critical for the teacher to use
this process to make informed decisions about the effectiveness of overall instruction process.
In other words, there is no such thing as too much data. Data must be collected both
qualitatively and quantitatively in order to make teaching and learning process effective.I
think, however, that assessment process has become a bit overrated and has lost its actual
meaning. Where countries like Finland are showing spectacular results in internationally
renowned tests such as PISA, TIMMS, And PIRLS, their main focus is not on high-stakes testing,

Week 7 Task and Reflection on Assessment

but on the quality of teaching. Sometimes, less is more approach is the most balanced and
effective one to use. We have to look at what Finland is doing in terms of assessment and
compare it against the fact that why such a huge focus on standardized testing is not bearing
intended results in USA.