Assessment Philosophy
The ultimate goal of assessment for my personal teaching is to increase the depth and effectiveness of my teaching, focus instruction based on needs, and provide an accurate, unbiased representation of student learning and growth. Assessment should serve to increase the depth and effectiveness of my teaching by allowing me access to data that will inform my teaching. This would mean using a wide variety of kinds of assessment in order to help me understand both what my students understand and the most effective ways of teaching the group with which I am working. Assessments should help me answer pertinent questions about whether students really understand the material and if not, the gaps in knowledge that are present. It should also help with differentiation as I am challenged to give my students enough variety in assessment that they can all adequately demonstrate their knowledge. It should also help to inform my teaching in that it identifies those who need a greater challenge. Many times, I think that assessment is used only to determine what students don't know, but sometimes it can help to highlight those that really understand and might become disinterested due to repetition within my classroom. It also helps to determine what methods my students need more practice on, for example, if students are perfectly understanding the material with fill-in-the-blank questions, but are unable to compare or contrast the material then I can deduct that they are only understanding on the surface or that we need to practice the strategy of comparing and contrasting more. This helps with the implementation of higher-order thinking and finding ways to explore knowledge in deeper and more meaningful ways.
This in turn focuses my instruction based on the needs of my students. Assessment should guide the pacing and material being taught within your classroom. For example, if my students are fully understanding past tense irregular verbs but struggling with capitalization of holidays and brand names, then my instructional focus should be on capitalization and I can only determine that with assessment. An important thing to note, I believe, is that this is not always in the form of a test. Sometimes this is an informal assessment done simply by asking students to complete an in-class worksheet or answer comprehension questions. This means that classroom time is spent on what they actually need to learn instead of devoting the same time to each concept. This also means that I am teaching to specific gaps in learning in order to bring each student to full knowledge of all of the required concepts. Perhaps most importantly, it values mastery of concepts and skills over coverage of material.
Lastly, assessment should give me an accurate, unbiased representation of both learning and growth. In addition to determining effectiveness and focusing instruction, this allows me to determine future instruction and be able to accurately report to anyone who is interested the results of my instruction. Assessments could be used to give the administration of the school or future teachers an analysis of the skills that my students excel in or need more practice with. This information sharing, again, ensures greater effectiveness in teaching as these future teachers can focus their instruction on the students' needed skills instead of simply trying to get coverage on all of the material in a textbook. This also helps me to see students' growth, which is every bit as important as the end result. This is especially important when students come in significantly below the desired goal. It is important to determine how effective instruction was in increasing their abilities and knowledge, even if they did not reach the desired goal at the end of the school year. This demonstration of growth might also be for the purpose of giving parents specifics about where their child is succeeding and struggling. For example, your student is proficient in subtraction facts within 50, but struggles with addition facts within 100. In order to have this be an accurate, unbiased representation though, teachers must take into account the reliability and validity of their assessments. They also must make sure they are using multiple measures in order to triangulate their data and ensure its' effectiveness. This means selecting data that is representative of where a student is at, and explaining what the expected skill requirements are by the end of the year. This also means choosing specific assignments to grade and present to the parent. Specifically making this choice ensures that teachers are accurately representing students as individuals and as a whole group/class. This is important because the teacher may have to scaffold concepts or skills in order to help a particular group of students fully understand a concept. Indeed, assessment should not be feared or tolerated, but instead embraced for its' value in defining gaps in knowledge, focusing instruction, and providing accurate representation of learning in order to make teachers more effective and continually challenge teachers to be the very best they can be so that they develop students who strive for their dreams.
This in turn focuses my instruction based on the needs of my students. Assessment should guide the pacing and material being taught within your classroom. For example, if my students are fully understanding past tense irregular verbs but struggling with capitalization of holidays and brand names, then my instructional focus should be on capitalization and I can only determine that with assessment. An important thing to note, I believe, is that this is not always in the form of a test. Sometimes this is an informal assessment done simply by asking students to complete an in-class worksheet or answer comprehension questions. This means that classroom time is spent on what they actually need to learn instead of devoting the same time to each concept. This also means that I am teaching to specific gaps in learning in order to bring each student to full knowledge of all of the required concepts. Perhaps most importantly, it values mastery of concepts and skills over coverage of material.
Lastly, assessment should give me an accurate, unbiased representation of both learning and growth. In addition to determining effectiveness and focusing instruction, this allows me to determine future instruction and be able to accurately report to anyone who is interested the results of my instruction. Assessments could be used to give the administration of the school or future teachers an analysis of the skills that my students excel in or need more practice with. This information sharing, again, ensures greater effectiveness in teaching as these future teachers can focus their instruction on the students' needed skills instead of simply trying to get coverage on all of the material in a textbook. This also helps me to see students' growth, which is every bit as important as the end result. This is especially important when students come in significantly below the desired goal. It is important to determine how effective instruction was in increasing their abilities and knowledge, even if they did not reach the desired goal at the end of the school year. This demonstration of growth might also be for the purpose of giving parents specifics about where their child is succeeding and struggling. For example, your student is proficient in subtraction facts within 50, but struggles with addition facts within 100. In order to have this be an accurate, unbiased representation though, teachers must take into account the reliability and validity of their assessments. They also must make sure they are using multiple measures in order to triangulate their data and ensure its' effectiveness. This means selecting data that is representative of where a student is at, and explaining what the expected skill requirements are by the end of the year. This also means choosing specific assignments to grade and present to the parent. Specifically making this choice ensures that teachers are accurately representing students as individuals and as a whole group/class. This is important because the teacher may have to scaffold concepts or skills in order to help a particular group of students fully understand a concept. Indeed, assessment should not be feared or tolerated, but instead embraced for its' value in defining gaps in knowledge, focusing instruction, and providing accurate representation of learning in order to make teachers more effective and continually challenge teachers to be the very best they can be so that they develop students who strive for their dreams.