Blog 10

What is assessment?

I never really thought about the difference between assessment and evaluation before. I never considered them synonymous, but I found it hard to pin-point a difference between them before reading this section. I certainly agree with Williams that assessment is harder for writing teachers than the teachers of other subject majors. In high school, for math (and sometimes for other subjects where the answers were straight-forward) we would grade each other’s papers, and, other than the potential for cheating, it was an simple and accurate system for teachers to see how the class did on the assignment. With writing, though, it’s obviously not so straight forward. There is no wholly right or wholly wrong. When I was doing my observations last semester, I spent quite a bit of time grading papers, and it was amazing to me to see how broad the spectrum was throughout the class. Fortunately for me, though, the teacher had a very specific rubric that helped immensely.

There’s a quote on page 299 that I really like. Williams writes, “students who have been writing C papers for weeks will get excited about an idea or a project, will work on it for days, and will produce B work or better. . . . By the same token, students who generally are very good writers occasionally will stumble, producing a paper that is barely passing.” It goes on to say that in both cases not everything that a student submits will reflect his or her true ability. I can’t remember where I read about this, whether it was this class or my EDUC416 class, but this is one of the reasons I like the concept of a portfolio. Of course, I will have no way of knowing just how effective a portfolio is until I try it in a real world situation, but, as a theory, I think it sounds promising. With a portfolio, students could choose papers and projects (the quantity of which would be predetermined by the teacher beforehand) to submit in their portfolios. They could include the works of which they are the proudest, and they would not have to include the ones on which they did poorly. The portfolio would be weighted more heavily than individual papers themselves.

Key factors in assessment and evaluation

Validity

One of the earliest assertions of this section, the statement about assessing what was taught, reminded me of something my 10th grade teacher used to do. As part of our heading, he would instruct us to list specific factors, all of which we discussed in class, that he was going to be focusing on heavily when grading. I didn’t understand the purpose of it then, but now I see that he was trying to improve our work step by step by focusing on the new things we learned.

Reliability

This section talked about the SATs, and while I can understand where they’re coming from in their statements (the tests are all scored the same way so it’s an easily tabulated means to get a general overview of progress), I do not think the SATs are reliable. The knowledge of the students needed to pass the SATs says very little about that student’s actual writing skill.

Predictability

If assessment systems are so often unreliable, how can predictability be accurate?

Cost

The last sentence in the first paragraph (page 307) talks about “teaching to the test.” This is something that worries me. It seems like so much time is spent “teaching to the test” that important lessons get pushed to the side.

Fairness and Politics

The “fairness” section was short and straight-forward. I have nothing to add in response to this piece of text. As for the “politics” section, I have a hard time coming to a conclusion with political ends related to teaching. Because I’m not a teacher yet, I still look at it from an outsider’s perspective and I can only make unbacked, theory based assertions. The section made me think of me of a George Carlin comedy sketch. He said: “No Child Left Behind! Oh really? Well, it wasn’t long ago you were talking about giving kids a Head Start. ‘Head Start’? ‘Left Behind? Looks like someone’s loosing f***ing ground here.” Maybe that’s not the most relevant quote (or the most appropriate) but it’s what stuck in my mind as I was reading the “politics” section. Relating to the section itself, I have a hard time believing the assertion that funding has little to do with performance scores. How is a school that does not even have enough books for all students supposed to compete with a school with Smart Boards in every classroom?

Reducing the paper load

I like the quote on page 316 that says, “everything we know about how students learn indicates that improvement comes when comments are made on a draft that students will revise . . .” I completely agree with this. In high school, many of our papers were single draft submissions, so when we got our work back, even though we read the comments, we didn’t put the comments into practice because the paper was finished and it was time to move on to something different.

Holistic scoring

I like the idea of holistic scoring. I think it’s something I’d have to wait until I had a few years of teaching behind me before I attempt it though because there’s so much at risk if I don’t facilitate it correctly. I would hope that a process like holistic scoring would encourage students to reflect upon their own work, knowing in advance how their classmates would be grading their papers. Additionally, I liked the idea of students working together to develop their own rubric. I think they’d care more if it was their own creation.

Portfolio grading

Williams presents portfolios as an alternative to holistic scoring. Of the two, I prefer portfolios, but I would like to give holistic scoring a try sometime. I’ve already mentioned portfolios earlier in my post, so I won’t readdress it here.

Sample rubrics and sample papers

Being able to see examples was helpful for me, though I’m not sure if they needed to include quite so many examples.