Comments on: On Assessment http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2006/10/23/on-assessment/ Technology is neither the problem nor the solution. Wed, 7 Jan 2009 02:08:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Jennifer http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2006/10/23/on-assessment/#comment-7362 Jennifer Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:04:39 +0000 http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2006/10/23/on-assessment/#comment-7362 In my opinion I do not think that quizzes and test are a valid way to measure what a student knows. I for one have test anxiety, so almost every test I take, I fail. I know the material and have studied multiple times, but I can not score well on test. Having students complete projects is another way to measure what a student knows, but how do you know they completly understood what they were suppose to do. If they don't understand then they can not complete the project to the fullest. What if they missed a part of the lesson or didn't understand all the lessons associated with the project? Then they can't complete the assignment to its fullest. I can tell you first hand that assessments that I give do not measure what we intend for them to know. My students struggle all together and giving them a test to assess what they know does not work. They can not retain the information given and they are totally lost. If a test is valid how do we know it is valid for all students? We don't. Many test that my students are forced to take throughout the year by the state are not measuring what the students really know. We give a GRADE test three times a year and my students (SPED) are not allowed to have accomodations on this test. Many of my students can comprehend what is read to them, but they can not read. I think this is a bunch of crap that we are taking time away from teaching to test students without accomodations. My students look as if they are making no progress from this test. In my opinion I do not think that quizzes and test are a valid way to measure what a student knows. I for one have test anxiety, so almost every test I take, I fail. I know the material and have studied multiple times, but I can not score well on test. Having students complete projects is another way to measure what a student knows, but how do you know they completly understood what they were suppose to do. If they don’t understand then they can not complete the project to the fullest. What if they missed a part of the lesson or didn’t understand all the lessons associated with the project? Then they can’t complete the assignment to its fullest.

I can tell you first hand that assessments that I give do not measure what we intend for them to know. My students struggle all together and giving them a test to assess what they know does not work. They can not retain the information given and they are totally lost.

If a test is valid how do we know it is valid for all students? We don’t. Many test that my students are forced to take throughout the year by the state are not measuring what the students really know. We give a GRADE test three times a year and my students (SPED) are not allowed to have accomodations on this test. Many of my students can comprehend what is read to them, but they can not read. I think this is a bunch of crap that we are taking time away from teaching to test students without accomodations. My students look as if they are making no progress from this test.

]]> By: phaedrus » Blog Archive » On Assessment http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2006/10/23/on-assessment/#comment-7171 phaedrus » Blog Archive » On Assessment Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:09:17 +0000 http://durandus.com/phaedrus/2006/10/23/on-assessment/#comment-7171 [...] This echoes a question from the comments on Lexie’s blog: phaedrus » Blog Archive » On Assessment One of the problems we face it how to asses whether our students learned what we intended them to learn. In a classroom setting, we give tests and quizzes. We give homework that has to be passed in. We assign projects and grade them. But we also look to see who’s keeping up with classroom discussion and who’s actually making cogent commentary. We tend to think that, for the most part, the student in our class did the work if we can see them doing it. We tend to evaluate homework with an eye toward, “Does this sound like Johnny?” [...] [...] This echoes a question from the comments on Lexie’s blog: phaedrus » Blog Archive » On Assessment One of the problems we face it how to asses whether our students learned what we intended them to learn. In a classroom setting, we give tests and quizzes. We give homework that has to be passed in. We assign projects and grade them. But we also look to see who’s keeping up with classroom discussion and who’s actually making cogent commentary. We tend to think that, for the most part, the student in our class did the work if we can see them doing it. We tend to evaluate homework with an eye toward, “Does this sound like Johnny?” [...]

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