The final "smack in the head" moment of realization that motivated me to write this post came from this post by Shelly Blake-Plock over at @TeachPaperless.
I am really into assessment. I teach a graduate course in assessment for future school leaders where I get to lead discussions about oh-such-fun stuff like instructional sensitivity and rubrics and interpretation of standardized test results. I like to dream up new ways to assess students to see what they know so I can help set up conditions for learning and knowing. I am always in the process of learning effective ways for students to use assessment data in order to learn how to fix their own learning. I am constantly badgering my students (in a caring way, of course) to assess themselves so that they can truly see what they know and don't know.
You could even go as far as to say that I am a tad obsessed about assessment. I'm pretty sure my husband lives in fear that I will someday give him a report on the husband skills he has mastered and not mastered and discuss how we can help him fix his husband knowledge.
So, I'm not ashamed to admit it--I am an assessment nerd.
But, for the past few years in my little assessment kingdom, there's been an idea that's been slowly sneaking up on me, nagging at the fringes of my mind. Lately this idea been more persistent, growing louder and louder over the course of this school year, tugging obstinately at my mental sleeves every time my students take one of our common summative assessments at the end of a unit.
That idea is this: I don't think I or my students need summative assessments anymore.
Before I go any further, let me discuss what I do assessment-wise in my classroom. Almost every day I give some type of formative assessment, using a variety of tools and resources depending on where my students are at with their learning. (In fact, it feels weird if I don't give a formative assessment--like I'm going to go into the next day's lesson planning directionless because I don't know where my students' learning is.) At the start of learning, I usually just need an overview of progress for an entire class. In this case, my formative assessment methods are simple, quick and easy methods, such as the "thumbs up/thumbs down" approach, a quick poll or quiz in Edmodo, or the built-in exit ticket option in Socrative.
But, when I need to take a peek at how each student is progressing with their learning, I will issue a progress check in Juno during the last 10 minutes of class (I stopped giving quizzes long ago, as my upper-level students chased points with them, and my non-upper-level students just saw them as yet another opportunity to make themselves feel stupid and rack up another D or F in the gradebook). I do what's called progressive progress checks, backing up and reassessing on previous skills as well as assessing current learning going on in the classroom. These progress checks are enough for me to see who has mastered the material and who hasn't. Students are immediately shown the results of these assessments, and they begin working on what they need to fix, providing evidence of this fixing on their ePortfolios. I give them three or four "tries," or progress checks, to master the material. Since I unfortunately have to report grades once a week for athletic eligibility--if I ruled the grading world, I wouldn't issue scores until the end of each semester since all learning during that time is, to me, learning in progress--I take the final score and enter that in the gradebook.
However, those scores are never final. Because this year I am always backing up and reassessing on previous skills and knowledge, students know that there will always be opportunities for fixing their knowledge, so they can always improve that score. (I do lower scores if they do not demonstrate continued mastery, something of which students are acutely aware.) Also, because their final exam each semester is an ePortfolio, they have this final opportunity to demonstrate understanding in their own way, a final reassessment of all of the skills and understandings they have created over the semester. This has started (I think, anyway) to create a culture of ongoing learning and fixing of learning, showing students that they always have another shot at learning the learning.
And that's why I do not feel a need for summative assessments any longer. If learning is ongoing and continuous and never truly ends, why do I need to stop and waste an entire class period making students take an assessment that, in the past, has signaled an end to learning? I don't know about you, but when I took an end-of-unit test in high school, it was an unconscious signal that I could forget all that junk I just memorized for a test to make room for all the new junk I was going to memorize and forget for the next test. And every time I give one of these common summative assessments, my students seem to receive that "I can forget this now" signal--and that's not an attitude I want to foster in my classroom. I want them to see that learning never ends, that they can't forget what we've already learned, and that what we have already learned is connected to what we are learning and about to learn.
In other words, I want them to see that all learning is connected. I want them to realize that learning doesn't fit neatly into units or chapters, never to interact or come into contact with learning in other units. This is why I end up using these summative assessments formatively, to allow students what they still need to master, to have them see what knowledge needs to be fixed and what connections still need to be made between concepts for their final ePortfolio assessment. This soothes a little of the increasing frustration I am experiencing with giving an entire class period over to these tests-- when I feel I am getting more learning bang for my instructional buck out of my smaller 10-minute formative assessments.
This doesn't mean I am against the concept of having common assessments by any means--the conversations that my colleagues and I have while crafting these assessments is incredibly valuable. It allows us to hash out what mastery looks like, call out questions that only assess surface-level learning, and have awesome discussions about what true learning is when analyzing results of assessments. I think, however, our time may be better spent developing more common formative assessments rather than summative, and discussing the data from these formative assessments in order to improve our ability to set up conditions for student learning while the learning is happening instead of after someone says that the official time for learning this content is over, as a summative assessment does.
What I am against, however, is having a test just because it's traditional to have a test at some predefined "end of learning" point, especially when learning does not really end if you have your curriculum designed sensibly (rather than around when the state tests are given, which I have seen all too often). And by "sensibly" I mean designed so that students must constantly use prior skills and concepts to master new skills and concepts; having your curriculum rooted in more than just content to be covered, but connections to be made so students can construct their own understandings.
This is why I think my students and I don't need summative assessments anymore--why use them when we're already getting the data we need for learning from formative assessments? Why set aside a special day and precious instructional time for students to prove they have mastered concepts and skills when that's something that can be built into shorter formative assessments and through constant reassessment?
Why give assessments that, in my experience, don't do a thing but tell students when they can forget?
These are just some of the questions that have been running through my mind all year; I'll let you all ponder them privately or in the comments. But right now I have to get back to that report I'm working on for my husband.
I am really into assessment. I teach a graduate course in assessment for future school leaders where I get to lead discussions about oh-such-fun stuff like instructional sensitivity and rubrics and interpretation of standardized test results. I like to dream up new ways to assess students to see what they know so I can help set up conditions for learning and knowing. I am always in the process of learning effective ways for students to use assessment data in order to learn how to fix their own learning. I am constantly badgering my students (in a caring way, of course) to assess themselves so that they can truly see what they know and don't know.
You could even go as far as to say that I am a tad obsessed about assessment. I'm pretty sure my husband lives in fear that I will someday give him a report on the husband skills he has mastered and not mastered and discuss how we can help him fix his husband knowledge.
So, I'm not ashamed to admit it--I am an assessment nerd.
But, for the past few years in my little assessment kingdom, there's been an idea that's been slowly sneaking up on me, nagging at the fringes of my mind. Lately this idea been more persistent, growing louder and louder over the course of this school year, tugging obstinately at my mental sleeves every time my students take one of our common summative assessments at the end of a unit.
That idea is this: I don't think I or my students need summative assessments anymore.
Before I go any further, let me discuss what I do assessment-wise in my classroom. Almost every day I give some type of formative assessment, using a variety of tools and resources depending on where my students are at with their learning. (In fact, it feels weird if I don't give a formative assessment--like I'm going to go into the next day's lesson planning directionless because I don't know where my students' learning is.) At the start of learning, I usually just need an overview of progress for an entire class. In this case, my formative assessment methods are simple, quick and easy methods, such as the "thumbs up/thumbs down" approach, a quick poll or quiz in Edmodo, or the built-in exit ticket option in Socrative.
But, when I need to take a peek at how each student is progressing with their learning, I will issue a progress check in Juno during the last 10 minutes of class (I stopped giving quizzes long ago, as my upper-level students chased points with them, and my non-upper-level students just saw them as yet another opportunity to make themselves feel stupid and rack up another D or F in the gradebook). I do what's called progressive progress checks, backing up and reassessing on previous skills as well as assessing current learning going on in the classroom. These progress checks are enough for me to see who has mastered the material and who hasn't. Students are immediately shown the results of these assessments, and they begin working on what they need to fix, providing evidence of this fixing on their ePortfolios. I give them three or four "tries," or progress checks, to master the material. Since I unfortunately have to report grades once a week for athletic eligibility--if I ruled the grading world, I wouldn't issue scores until the end of each semester since all learning during that time is, to me, learning in progress--I take the final score and enter that in the gradebook.
However, those scores are never final. Because this year I am always backing up and reassessing on previous skills and knowledge, students know that there will always be opportunities for fixing their knowledge, so they can always improve that score. (I do lower scores if they do not demonstrate continued mastery, something of which students are acutely aware.) Also, because their final exam each semester is an ePortfolio, they have this final opportunity to demonstrate understanding in their own way, a final reassessment of all of the skills and understandings they have created over the semester. This has started (I think, anyway) to create a culture of ongoing learning and fixing of learning, showing students that they always have another shot at learning the learning.
And that's why I do not feel a need for summative assessments any longer. If learning is ongoing and continuous and never truly ends, why do I need to stop and waste an entire class period making students take an assessment that, in the past, has signaled an end to learning? I don't know about you, but when I took an end-of-unit test in high school, it was an unconscious signal that I could forget all that junk I just memorized for a test to make room for all the new junk I was going to memorize and forget for the next test. And every time I give one of these common summative assessments, my students seem to receive that "I can forget this now" signal--and that's not an attitude I want to foster in my classroom. I want them to see that learning never ends, that they can't forget what we've already learned, and that what we have already learned is connected to what we are learning and about to learn.
In other words, I want them to see that all learning is connected. I want them to realize that learning doesn't fit neatly into units or chapters, never to interact or come into contact with learning in other units. This is why I end up using these summative assessments formatively, to allow students what they still need to master, to have them see what knowledge needs to be fixed and what connections still need to be made between concepts for their final ePortfolio assessment. This soothes a little of the increasing frustration I am experiencing with giving an entire class period over to these tests-- when I feel I am getting more learning bang for my instructional buck out of my smaller 10-minute formative assessments.
This doesn't mean I am against the concept of having common assessments by any means--the conversations that my colleagues and I have while crafting these assessments is incredibly valuable. It allows us to hash out what mastery looks like, call out questions that only assess surface-level learning, and have awesome discussions about what true learning is when analyzing results of assessments. I think, however, our time may be better spent developing more common formative assessments rather than summative, and discussing the data from these formative assessments in order to improve our ability to set up conditions for student learning while the learning is happening instead of after someone says that the official time for learning this content is over, as a summative assessment does.
What I am against, however, is having a test just because it's traditional to have a test at some predefined "end of learning" point, especially when learning does not really end if you have your curriculum designed sensibly (rather than around when the state tests are given, which I have seen all too often). And by "sensibly" I mean designed so that students must constantly use prior skills and concepts to master new skills and concepts; having your curriculum rooted in more than just content to be covered, but connections to be made so students can construct their own understandings.
This is why I think my students and I don't need summative assessments anymore--why use them when we're already getting the data we need for learning from formative assessments? Why set aside a special day and precious instructional time for students to prove they have mastered concepts and skills when that's something that can be built into shorter formative assessments and through constant reassessment?
Why give assessments that, in my experience, don't do a thing but tell students when they can forget?
These are just some of the questions that have been running through my mind all year; I'll let you all ponder them privately or in the comments. But right now I have to get back to that report I'm working on for my husband.
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