Betty Ray’s article, Assessment Carnival: More Than Quizzes and Tests) discussed assessment. It talks about teachers almost being a slave to tests. Teachers are involved in testing with state exams or test material covered in the classroom. Betty was trying to find ways to answer how can one use assessment to create learning, instead of trying to judge it? Betty did some research and found some educators that would help here solve her problem. Dan Meyer, Math teacher, believe, “Learning is not on a time line, so grading shouldn’t be either; grading should direct learning as it is really only feedback anyway; and you should be rewarded for putting in the effort to learn something you missed.” Assessment can be tricky issue. In my school district, we are discussing what grading scale we should use. It is amazing to hear different teacher’s opinion on the subject. Sometimes teachers in our meetings become very combative over the subject. It is hard to please everyone when every teacher has their own individual idea how students should be assessed.
In some ways, I must agree that we are slaves to tests. Anymore, it seems that students as well as school are "graded" based on some type of testing. We provide various types of assessments in our own classrooms, but when it comes right down to it, we are being judged based on how well, or not so well, students are doing on standardized tests such as the ACT and MME. In our district, we have begun the discussion of how to grade students across the board. Because all teachers grade differently, we are thinking that maybe it's time to come up with a common grading system throughout the building. Some think that this will make it easier and more fair for students having a common system.
ReplyDelete