Self Evident Assessment

by Mike Kaechele

I hate buzz words! I really do. But in education, as in any profession, we use them all of the time. I am guilty of it too, but there is one particular use that I especially hate. The political use of educational buzzwords by reformers and politicians to promote standardization and testing. I hate the current movement focusing on standard curriculum and tests for every student. I have always believed that individual, authentic assessment by professional teachers is the better course. I also believe that when students are doing authentic tasks that really matter that their learning is obvious to anyone who takes the time to talk to them. I have not always felt the ability to express this clearly to others though. Usually the best way is through stories and examples.

Then I saw John Hunter's Ted Talk about his World Peace Game. It is a fantastic simulation that is structured but open-ended. The whole video is worth your time but I want to focus on the segment from 14:40-16:55.



I love what John Hunter says:
       I get chills every time I see that. That's the kind of engagement
      we want to have happen. And I can't design that, I can't plan
      that, and I can't even test that. But it is self evident 
      assessment. We know that that is an authentic assessment of 
      learning. You know we have a lot of data but I think sometimes
      we go beyond data with the truth of learning of what is going on.

So as much as I hate buzz words I propose a new one to fight against people who say that we need more "data" (test scores) or "common assessments" (test scores) to help improve "student achievement" (test scores): self evident assessment.

When students, especially in the PBL model, present authentic work to real audiences the skills and learning are apparent and obvious. I do not hear people asking how teachers are assessing in these situations. On the other hand testing is a great way to assess worksheet dittos and questions from the textbook. Maybe the reason that we have so many politicians and reformers pushing the testing agenda is because too many teachers for too long have not given students the opportunity to engage in activities which produce self evident assessment.

I believe as politicians push educators into testing and more testing leading to test prep and more test prep that parents will seek out and demand these type of learning experiences for their children.

Question of the Day: Final Exams

I'm posting these "questions of the day" all through our school's exam week as a way to spark discussion about topics that have been popping up on Twitter. Today's question is therefore especially timely.

Question (ok, ok... actually four questions):

In assessing a student's understanding, how effective do you find traditional "Scantron + Short-Answer / Essay" final exams? Do you feel like you gain a better sense of the student's understanding of the material as you grade this type of test? Have you ever been so surprised at a student's success on one of these exams that it made you re-evaluate your overall assessment of the kid? Or do these types of exams generally tell you nothing more about the student than what you already know?

The "Open" Classroom and Cheating

Question of the Day: Does an "open" assessment approach (open texts, Net, real-time studentsharing) promote or dissuade cheating?

I'm posting this as I'm watching my students take an open Latin assessment. Basically my concern is three-fold:

1) There is no where outside of the traditional classroom that someone would not be able to use whatever resources they wanted to complete a task -- [yeah, yeah, I can already hear the desert island iPhone battery jokes]. 

2) What we usually call "tests" are anything but.

3) As far as "cheating" goes: why not just create assessments that a) don't assess the ability to memorize and b) are different for each kid?

Want to know your thoughts. Do you give open assessments? Do you let students use resources (Net, notes, each other)? How do you define "cheating"? Why do teachers create assessments that can be "cheated" on?