As I deepen my understanding of assessments, I am beginning to understand the controversy behind it more and more with each day that passes. Although most of my experience has been at the high school level, I can imagine that the same conversations happen every day in elementary schools.
Today, I had an impromptu conversation with a teacher regarding collecting formative evidence for assessment versus the surface level ease of summative assessments. Personally, I feel that when formative assessment is done correctly and efficiently, it is less work than most people would assume. A truly good summative assessment takes much more work than just administering and marking a test.
I am so grateful to have attended a professional development day led by Sandra Herbst, a Canadian expert in the field of Assessment for Learning, in my first six months of teaching. She instilled in me how simple it is to create a collection of evidence be when you think outside of the box.
I do believe that assessing students is key in education for a variety of reasons. Some of the highlighted roles I see of it are:
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- As educators, if for no other purpose, we must know where our students are at in order to advance their learning. It guides what we do in our classrooms, the sequence to the scope of the curriculum.
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- Assessment in elementary school is a good tool for helping teachers communicate with parents and guardians regarding the learner; however, it shouldn’t be the only tool in the box.
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- Having assessment data is helpful to the school as a business. I think that many people forget to think about schools as the organizations they are. Maybe that is my Commerce Degree talking, but they really are. Schools can utilize assessments to guide their growth plans.
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- Assessment at the elementary level can also provide statistics to outside agencies ranging from district boards of education to provincial curriculum planning teams and everything in between and beyond.
With assessment being such an essential part of the education system, I would love to see the work teachers do to prioritize assessment in their classrooms respected for what it truly needs to be. Teachers should have time built into the year for appropriate reflection and record-keeping on their students. I have pulled too many 12+ hour days already in my short career as a non-certified teacher staying late working on assessments or reporting, and not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but because I wanted to truly reflect evidence of learning for my students. I can see why teachers begin to take easier, shorter paths on things like assessment.