One of the most important ideas to remember is “What is the purpose of the assessment? What information are you trying to gather and what is the intent of the assessment?” A teacher may assess her class at the beginning of the year to establish activities and reading centers to help establish student achievement. A teacher will then assess periodically throughout the year to evaluate student progress, how well her children are learning, and students learning styles. These assessments do not always have to be standardized test. Some have said that performance assessment is anything that requires students to “do” something as opposed to filling in a bubble on an answer sheet (Stewart). To assess the whole child a proactive teacher will incorporate portfolios, performance tasks, journals, and projects both written and oral. Using some of these tools, a teacher will be able to identify a child’s strengths and weaknesses.
While I was researching topics I ran across this web site concerning assessing teachers and not the students. I couldn’t help but to read on. I particularly liked this statement: Importantly, looking at student test scores is not the way to assess teacher quality. Different classes have different students, different tests produce different results, students will test differently on different days, etc. Instead we should be looking at what teachers do (Kruse). We are often judged or assessed by individual’s performance and not the big picture. There are many obstacles we are faced with and no control over them.
I believe assessing for both students and teachers needs to have a purpose and it needs to be fair.
Reference
Kruse, Jerrid W. Teaching as a dynamic activity
Retrieved June6,2011rhttp://educatech.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/assess-the-teacher-not-the-students/
Stewart, Patrick. (). UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation. ASSESSING THE WHOLE CHILD.
Retrieved June 6, 2011, http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/guidebooks/wolekid.pdf
3 comments:
Kristi, what an interesting proposal: assess teachers not the students. I also agree that a student’s test score does not reflect a teacher's quality. If there was a teacher whose quality was sub-par, but his/her class scored through the roof on a standardized test that does not mean that they are an excellent teacher. There was the little boy that mom tutored for 3 months prior to his End of Grad testing. According to his mom, his teacher did not take the time with the child and he often received below average grades in class. When his test scored came back, this child scored the highest in his school. Now was this due to the teacher's quality? According to his mom no, but his school seemed to think otherwise. Just something for us all to reflect on. Great blog!!!
Kristi,
Thanks for the information. Currently I go into classrooms and use the CLASS assessment tool to assess teachers and their interactions with their students. The test is based off of teacher sensitivity, Regard for student perspective, cognitive, language, and several others. These areas all look at how the teacher engages the child in their learning experiences. It is wonderful fo Professional Development.
I agree that assessment should encompass several different methods to obtain an accurate view of the whole child. I think that portfolios are a wonderful way to do this because they typically encompass many different types of work done by the child, as well as photographs and other documentation of children's progress that cannot be documented in words. I also believe that assessment should be done in relation to the child's previous level rather than a standard of normal.
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