No Child Left Untested

Assessing Students' Reading Abilities, Needs, Attitudes, and Interests in the Content Classroom

A serious topic, testing is, but I simply cannot help myself.  The authors themselves maintain a strained relationship with the concept of over-testing students (cautioning against a "barrage of tests" and arguing, "Unless the pervasive inequalities implicit in traditional school structures--tracking, testing, and traditional patterns of teacher-dominated instruction--are changed, students from diverse backgrounds are likely to be prevented from achieving high levels of literacy.").  Yet, I also recognize the importance of formative, ongoing assessments of student learning in order to guide and improve instruction and interventions (which is not to say that I am an advocate of high-stakes testing).  

 Informal assessments, which range from daily observations (formative) to final exams (summative), are teacher-created assessments which can inform classroom planning so that a wide range of students can be effectively served.  Formal assessments, which are often norm-referenced, are best exemplified by standardized tests.  These tests scores are often destructive, resulting in (and sometimes reflecting) unequal educational opportunities for students of color, English Language Learners, and low-income students, and portraying underperforming schools in a negative light and creating ever-increasing pressure on schools. 

 On a more positive note, informal reading assessments can be helpful in determining students' attitudes and interests in a subject area (by having students write a subject-specific autobiography with their prior experiences in math, for instance, or completing group surveys, checklists, or interest inventories) and assessing students' strengths and weaknesses in your content area (using cloze reading tests or Content Area Reading Inventories).

The best assessment practices across subjet areas are:

• formative, not summative
• descriptive or narrative, not scored and numerical
• student-centered, involving students in record-keeping and in evaluating their own work
• approached from several angles, including observation, conversation, products, and performances
• part of everyday instruction instead of separate from it
• ongoing, flexible, and varied
• focused on building from strengths rather than pointing out deficiencies
• sensitive to processes as well as products

Accordingly, "the multifaceted assessment processes currently advocated provide teachers with the many kinds of information they need about students for effective curriculum planning, and also give students feedback that will help them grow as learners."  Three promising assessment practices include the following:

1. Authentic assessment, which is "based on observing, collecting and evaluating data from the ongoing daily activities that students engage in as they learn."  This includes teacher journal entries, notes from teacher-student conferences, drafts and final products, lab reports, response journals, written discussion of math calculations, reports and reflections on collaborative learning, rubrics for presentations and dramatic readings, and student self-evaluations.
2. Observation, or "naturalistic assessment," involves ongoing documented teacher observation about student progress.  This type of assessment (think about observing facial expressions when a student is approaching a task or assignment) can really inform how and when a teacher provides additional instruction or support.
3. Student portfolios are a highly recommended form of effective, authentic assessment, and can be either inclusive (containing a majority of the student's work collected over time to indicate growth) or showcase (containing only the student's best work or to document specific skills or abilities), depending on its purpose.  These portfolios can be used in any content area, as evidenced by the suggestions for using portfolios in a math class: students are encouraged to include written descriptions of the results of investigations, descriptions and diagrams of problem-solving processes, statistical studies and graphic representations, responses to open-ended questions, group reports and photographs of student projects, and many other authentic assessments.  Portfolios encourage students to develop the metacognitive skills required in charting out their own progress by looking back at their own learning and reflecting on it.  This process makes them active participants in their own learning.