Assessment Philosophy: How to Make CQ+PQ>IQ a Reality

A curated presentation of my stances, beliefs, and rationale on assessment in English Language Arts classrooms. CQ+PQ>IQ Table of Contents is available in the top left-hand corner.

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For me, over-assessed students look a lot like what I did in high school and a lot like what my friends looked like in high school too.

Over-assessed students look like students who complete work just to get the work done and not to garner insight into their own understanding.

Over-assessed students look like students who will take the “L” on a homework assignment or project because they need to use class time to work on a different class.

Over-assessment looks like the prioritization of one class over another simply because the other class “looks better on a resume” even if it doesn’t matter to the student.

Over-assessment looks like severe stress and pressure on young students.

Over-assessment looks like the poor allocation of resources to assist students who struggle with testing environments and pressures.

Over-assessment looks like the normalization of test anxiety, the abuse of prescription drugs like Adderall just to make it through the next assignment, and the prioritization of school over individual well-being.

Over-assessed students looks like an entire generation of students who are not able to perform creatively on assessments because they are accustomed to prescribed, formulaic tests written by people they will never meet.

These beliefs are not merely anecdotal but are instead a reflection of the belief that “excessive testing may teach children to be good at tests, but does not prepare them for productive adult lives” (Bronson & Merryman 2010). Over-assessing students does nothing to prepare students for productive adult lives and only succeeds in causing undue stress and mental harm to students across the country.

Bronson, Po and Merryman, Ashley. “The Creativity Crisis,” Newsweek, July 10, 2010.

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I wrote this speech in May of 2014 - my junior year of high school.

I delivered it to my classmates, just days after AP exams had ended and just as college recommendations and applications were beginning to ramp up for us. 

I was 17 and already I was sick and tired of standardized testing and the toxic culture of scores which permeated my high school.

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Student Involvement in Assessment Criteria

One way that educators can involve students in the assessment and evaluation process is by offering students the opportunity to create and determine the criteria on which they will be assessed.

Student-Created Rubrics give students power over what they will be assessed on while also encouraging them to think about the materials and content they have studied and determine what they think is the most significant.

Below is an example of student brainstorming for the categories and criteria of a rubric.

From this information, teachers are able to create organized and “formalized” versions of this criteria. In giving students this power and in formalizing their ideas, teachers can get students involved in the assessment process beyond the work and creation portion of the task.

Student-Created Rubrics are ideal for summative and performance assessments and should reflect the class’ ideas on assessment.

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Assessment Data

Data gathered from assessments will be used to provide insight into what students are learning, how they learn best, what strategies I use as an educator are effective or ineffective, as well as a way to garner additional support from administrators and departments to either provide additional resources or as evidence of how a particular strategy or lesson is succeeding with students.

Assessment data is not only useful for educators but it is useful for students, their families, and other educators within a district or department as assessment data can provide insight into which particular strategies and instructional frameworks are effective for students of diverse backgrounds. If an educator uses a particular strategy for an inclusive classroom that is effective for students with special education needs then this evidence should be shared with the student, their family, and their teachers so that this success can be spread out across all disciplines.

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Performance assessment tasks allow teachers to simultaneously instruct and assess

(Lenski et al 32)

The best way that students can demonstrate their learning in the ELA classroom is through product/performance assessments in which students have the opportunity to apply and display their understanding of ELA skills and content. Examples of these types of assessments include essays, presentations, performances, and projects in which students are able to apply skills to a product that displays their knowledge and their abilities. The ability to navigate ELA content and structure and format arguments through the use of skills is essential to ELA learning and performance based assessments enable students to display their navigation and thought processes in an authentic manner.

Not only do performance and product assessments benefit teachers in their instruction and assessments, but performance-based assessments are one of the “most effective types of assessments teachers can use to make instructional decisions for ELLs” (Lenski et al 29). In an ever-diversifying classroom, it is essential that educators ensure that the assessments they implement are appropriate and meaningful for all students from every background.

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Transcript available here.

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Common Core in the Classroom

While I may not be the biggest fan of Common Core State Standards, I understand and respect them to a degree. That being said, as an educator I can appreciate the vagueness of the standards for the opportunities they offer in originality and differentiation when it comes to assessment. It is the ambiguity and looseness of the CCSS that allows educators to work in the system as well as work the system to best suit the individual needs of a district, school, department, and classroom.

With this in mind, however, it is important that the use of CCSS is not used to either teach to the test for two major reasons: 1) teaching to the test has limited application skills beyond the standardized test and 2) not all students prioritize standardized testing as a part of their future planning. In our teaching, we must attempt to be as authentic as possible in our instruction and curriculum and part of this authenticity means recognizing that while some students may choose to go onto college, some may choose to go to vocational school, join the army, or directly enter into the workforce.

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When there's a class discussion about something you're passionate about but your anxiety won't let you speak

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In the case of large class discussions, for example, not all students can or should be assessed on their ability to speak informally. While some students may feel more comfortable performing their understanding via a presentation or performance while others may feel more comfortable writing an essay or taking a test. It is not fair to use one single assessment to gauge all students’ understandings because just as they will learn differently, students will assess differently on paper or in purpose. 

Class discussion should not be the only way in which students are assessed, not should they only be assessed on their essays or quizzes or projects. Assessment should be holistic and reflect on all of the students’ strengths and efforts. Learning cannot be measured by a single assessment because all students will perform differently based on their individual needs and funds of knowledges. While all students may hypothetically have the same level of understanding of material, their individuality means that they will perform or display that learning in different ways.

Students should be assessed on what they are capable of not what they are incapable of in a certain medium.

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For large class discussions, educators should allow students who are anxious about speaking in front of their peers different opportunities/ways to participate:

1) They get to choose when/if they participate (i.e. they are not forced to)

2) Allow them to write down their thoughts/questions on post-its or notecards so you know they are involved

3) Let them have a trusted peer or friend read those thoughts/questions on their behalf!

4) Have different types of class discussions - silent discussions, online discussions, small group, large group, etc.

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Assessments After ELA Lessons

This is an example of how students can use the skills and information they have obtained from instructional material after the instructional period and for an activity that has power and purpose beyond the classroom.

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Assessment Before ELA Lessons

Before beginning a lesson on fate and legacies in Macbeth, students would reflect on their own ideas of fate, legacies, and achievements. Assessments like this before ELA instruction would allow educators to understand what students alredy know so that class time is used efficiently, understand what students want to know and what they do not know before really diving into the instructional materials.

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Assessment During ELA Lessons

A “bellringer” where students are asked to reflect on their reading of The Color of Water and their understanding of the text’s characters.

After a lesson on integrating quotes, students were given quotes and tasked with writing their own sentences with properly integrated quotes.

For both of these examples, students were given choice and the opportunity to work with ideas, themes, and/or mediums which are culturally relevant to them and the things in their lives.

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Assessment Throughout Instruction

Assessment is not an end of the unit task. Instead, assessment is something which should be on-going throughout the entire school year, before, during, and after instructional learning. Assessments are both measures of learning and for learning and this occurs throughout the learning process in different patterns and ways. Assessments should reveal student learning and thinking so that at any point in the period of instruction, educators can adapt and evolve along with their students instead of “parking and barking” and moving on without checking for understanding.

Assessment Before: diagnostic tests, surveys, graffiti walls, “pick-a-side,” speed debates

Assessment During: Checking in with students individually or in groups during lessons, short written responses/1 minute essays, exit-slips, bellringers

Assessment After: Performances, tableaux, multi-modal projects, essays

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The Role of End-of-Unit Assessments

End-of-unit/culminating assessments are not more significant than formative checks because the goal of learning should be the process rather than the outcome.

As educators, we must “take deliberate steps to select and organize multiple artifacts representing student learning” and we must recognize that “collecting and analyzing data from multiple sources over time can provide a more powerful tool for understanding students’ interests, abilities, needs, and values” (Edwards et al 683).

The skills students are learning and engaging with through their course work is just as important if not more so than their ability to complete and submit a cumulative assignment that may or may not include and make use of those skills.

While end-of-unit assessments can provide educators with an assessment of their students’ understanding of the materials of that particular unit, it may not provide them with an idea of how their students are engaging with and applying the skills they learned throughout instruction.

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Teaching Students to Write for Standardized Tests Only Teaches Them to Write for Standardized Tests.

Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy, University of Houston

Teaching in the Aftermath of the Test: Understanding and Addressing Student Conceptions of Writing in the Era of High-Stakes Testing

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As a student who underwent standardized testing nearly every year since the third grade, standardized testing did nothing for me in the classroom or outside of the classroom. It did not prepare me for my first job, it did not prepare me for college classes, it did not prepare me to develop the interpersonal and critical thinking skills that have enabled me to be successful in life.

Instead, standardized testing turned my school career into a competition, one in which the teenager sitting next to me was not a peer nor a friend but a competitor. Standardized testing meant losing sleep, stressing about scores and grades whose impact lingered only in the moment, and it meant the unfair categorization and judgement of my friends and peers based on the number associated with their name rather than their character, passion, or curiosity. 

Beyond that, standardized testing pitted me against my peers, placed valuable time and resources into testing rather than the classroom, and was detrimental to my self-esteem and motivation for nearly all of my academic career (Afflerbach 151).

As an educator, I continue to see the stress of standardized testing in my observations and placements and the ways in which students sacrifice and judge their worth on a test they took for three hours instead of the years of work and experiences they have accumulated.

My rationale boils down to these points:

1) Standardized testing causes undue mental strain and pressure on already vulnerable students

2) Students experience unfair advantages and disadvantages based on socio-economic statuses

3) Standardized testing reflects on a students’ ability to read and take the test (i.e. students’ ability to recognize what right answer test-makers are searching for)

4) Standardized tests are not an authentic representation of the types of assessments individuals will encounter in non-academic settings and thus lacks application and significance outside of school and the testing centers 

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Student Self-Assessment: The Key to Stronger Student Motivation and Higher Achievement By James H. McMillan and Jessica Hearn

sine qua non = an indispensable condition, element, or factor; something essential (Source: Dictionary.com)

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When Grading Harms Student Learning

Instead of issuing zeros, penalizing late work, and grading formative assessments, teachers should make the classroom a place of hope instead of fear.

Could grades be used as a way to motivate students positively, increase confidence, and cultivate intrinsic motivation? 

Is evaluating student work inherently problematic because any grade below an A/100% could be viewed as punitive? 

How can teachers manage grading in a way that is feasible and useful for all parties involved?