Rethinking Assessment: Students and Teachers Assess All the Time

Alison Simmons
Editor
SABES Central Resource Center / World Education

In the previous volume of Adventures in Assessment I posed the question
“How will [I] measure the progress of my students so it is meaningful to them, informs instruction and curriculum and satisfies funders?”

Through my work in assessment over the year and working with authors on this volume of Adventures in Assessment, I have had a chance to rethink this question and what it means for me in my work as editor of this journal. What I found confirmed a belief I have held since I was an ESOL teacher. Assessment is done all the time by students and teachers. Teachers assess students initially for placement, to get a sense of their purpose for studying, and for their skill level.

On an ongoing basis teachers assess students to track progress and make decisions on movement to other levels or to redefine goals as needed as students’ lives change and their goals are accomplished. Finally, when students are finished with our services, teachers assess them to record achievement and indicate where their skills are now.

Teachers use a variety of ways to accomplish these tasks: observation, feedback sessions, portfolios and standardized tests. For many teachers, assessment is integrated into their instruction.

Students self assess all the time. They seek and receive feedback from teachers, community members, co-workers, other students, etc. Most of this feedback is immediate. Non-verbal clues (looks of confusion and impatience), lack of response or inaccurate responses by the listener are indicators that there was something problematic in the interaction. A series of questions and self reflection start: what was it about this interaction that was problematic? What were the barriers preventing the listener or receiver from understanding the interaction? Was it a bias? What do I need to work on and what is out of my control? The questioning process happens all the time within the students and helps them understand the complex process of language learning and set goals accordingly.

All this information is used to adjust our teaching, learning and perceptions of our students and their abilities.

When I asked teachers how they assess their students, they offer countless anecdotes and tools and systems to move students to levels, assess whether students can understand and apply the materials, and determine the immediate needs of the students, who needs other support services, etc. Teachers have an individual system of assessment and programs have internal systems that may not translate to other audiences.

Teachers know how to measure progress but get stuck trying to find a tool or reporting mechanism to put their data in that would satisfy all the different audiences. The question goes beyond, ‘how will I measure the progress of my students so it is meaningful to them, informs instruction and the curriculum and satisfies the funder?’

Rather the questions should be ‘how do I report the progress I have seen to satisfy different audiences? How do I report the progress my students have seen? What information is useful to me in my program and what information do I need to satisfy other audiences? I have seen checklists, portfolios, benchmarks, standardized tools used as alternative assessment forms, videos, audio tapes, charts etc. All document learning but are not transferable to audiences outside of the program or class.

I think we need to look more closely at developing ways to report progress that captures the gains our students are making. We need to look at what teachers are doing in the classroom and students are doing and focus our technical assistance in assisting programs, teachers and students in documenting and validating their assessment tools and seeing how/if they connect with the requirements of SPL levels and other funding mandates. In the process we need to validate and encourage teachers to continue to develop systems that inform instruction and show students where they are making gains and how far they have come in achieving their goals. We need to look more closely into the causes of problematic interactions and not assume that it always lies in the hands of the students.

In this issue Elizabeth Santiago talks with six ESOL practitioners about their assessment practices. The practitioners come from different contexts and describe barriers they overcome to make assessment meaningful for themselves as teachers and for their learners. They struggle with meeting reporting requirements and have come up with tools and systems that work for their programs. Janet Isserlis talks about her experience as a volunteer in an adult education program in Canada. She looks at the roles volunteers can play in the assessment process and how a particular assessment tool worked for her and her students in a conversation class. Olivia Steele, John Antonellis, Jane Shea, Kathe Kirkman, and Debra Tuler discuss challenges and opportunities in implementing a team-based approach to planning and evaluation in workplace education programs in Massachusetts. Michelle Brown walks us through the evolution of her Native Language Literacy Program that was developed and implemented after a hard look at why some students were not progressing in her program. She also introduces us to the tool they developed for their Native Language Literacy Program.

In another article Deborah Mercier-Cuenca talks about her experience using the Native Language Literacy Screening Device as a tool for her program. What she found out through the assessment process changed the way she approached her class and she, like Michelle Brown, demonstrates student-driven curriculum by teaching English Life Skills as part of their Native Language Literacy program.

Tricia Donovan in the What Counts? section asks us to look a different way to assess math skills. It goes beyond assessing just computation to look at habits of mind and other skills involved in solving a math problem. Peg Reidester helps us look at these new ideas more concretely as she takes us through an assessment of a math problem using a rubric.

Finally, Jeanne Kearsley reviews an assessment package by Cathy Shank that offers beginning and experienced teachers alike a way to document students’ progress.

Our next issue will be our tenth and we would like to look back a few years
and see how far we have come. There are a lot of issues and questions left after this volume that we would like to take up in future volumes. There are still questions about 1) the use and misuse of the “tests,” 2) reporting, and 3) barriers to efficient assessment processes. We invite you to share your ideas, successes, and questions as we learn from each other about our assessment practices.

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 9 (December 1996),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 1996.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.