I Personally Believe...

I personally believe that conversations about education have become too narrow. In search of the often promised but ever-elusive panacea, educational reformers like pharmaceutical companies do not seem to recognize the irony in their campaigns for new approaches, which seem at best to replace one set of symptoms with another. It is sometimes difficult for educators, those new to the profession especially, to cut through the jargon and define what it is they do and, more importantly, why. Assessment is one area in which teachers may find themselves struggling to make meaning under the constant barrage of new terminology. I personally believe that until each has determined how assessment fits into his/her greater philosophy, it is impossible to explain how it is used responsibly and ethically in the classroom. I hope that I have succeeded in doing this for myself. While I am well aware of the state standards for secondary English Language Arts and the specific grade-level goals set by members of our district faculty and staff for the classes I currently teach, I cannot say that these are the anchors of my instruction. I teach not standards but students and the majority of my planning time is spent on reflection about the aspects of environment and experience that I can create for them or control to some extent. I do assess my students regularly and I recognize the importance of using responsibly the information thereby collected but I do not consider myself worthy, willing or even able to measure the immense potential of each student nor the ultimate value of the skills and content that I have to share with them.

That said, I do not disagree with Nitko and Brookhart’s definition of the six categories of responsibility for teachers with regard to assessment. However, admittedly, I take the most pleasure in the first half of the listed assessment-related activities: crafting, choosing and administering assessment procedures. The latter activities dealing with the results are no less important but, I think, tainted too often by those salespeo—reformers aforementioned. Because I teach primarily high school juniors and it has become customary for students to take the Comprehensive Regents Examination in English at the conclusion of that school year, it has been suggested to me from the start of my career that I borrow significant procedural influence from the exam. Indeed, every single exam administered since the redesign of the test in the late 1990’s is readily available online for the taking. My students would certainly gain considerable access to novel, developmentally-appropriate literature from various authors in multiple genres through my choice of such assessment procedures. Also, they would have ample opportunity to write for the variety of purposes outlined in the state standards if they were frequently administered versions of this exam. Included along with the test materials are the instructions for exam proctors and the anchor papers, sample responses and scoring rubrics that correspond to each essay question. It could all be so easy. However, so much of what I love, which is very much—however immeasurably—a factor in the quality and relevance of instruction that my students receive is lost by relying so entirely on an exam that focuses only on standards and not on environment and experience, only on literacy and not on literature itself, the medium through which the human experience is shared. So, I have limited the influence of the Regents on my teaching. I address it, because I would be remiss in my duties if I did not acknowledge it, and I have crafted parallel tasks that resemble but require more than Regents essays and I focus a great deal of my energy on giving students sufficient information to know the difference between what we have done in class over the course of the year and what will need to be done on the test over the course of two days in June.

Indeed, of all the specific responsibilities that Nitko and Brookhart enumerate, I think that the most important and the area in which I most excel is in approaching assessments as “opportunities for students to demonstrate their maximum performance” and in communicating that philosophy and the “basic information about the assessment” to my students (80). I highly agree with the authors about what constitutes the basics, with some reservations about how much to share regarding the content to be assessed and what will be emphasized. I find that one major factor affecting student performance in school, not only on assessments but in a more generalized attitudinal approach to school, is the expectation that all learning activities are used by teachers to catch them doing something wrong, not reading a book, etc. It is important that we combat their anxieties with affirmation that we are looking forward to a demonstration of their strengths—an important distinction made in the text between maximum and typical performance (312). One of the most effective ways to do this, I have found, is to share with students the grading checklists and/or rubrics associated with the assessment beforehand. Once students begin to trust that my goal is not to trick them, it is safer to invest in being successful, which results in more accurate demonstrations of their knowledge and skills to be used in making decisions with students’ grades.

Still, I have come to detest grading and I do not think I am alone, although relatively few teachers may openly admit it since it is so popularly misattributed to laziness. Truly, this aversion stems mainly from the abuses of assessment results by others. While I enjoy seeing what my students do with the materials and instruction I offer in my classroom and I do believe that I responsibly assess their performance using effective tools and methods, absent from the discussions I have with my students about their assessments and how they are graded, others are not always equipped to interpret student grades meaningfully. Nitko and Brookhart assert that it is the teacher’s responsibility to communicate proper interpretations of assessment results with parents and school authorities, and to do so frequently (92). It is with this part of the job description that I greatly disagree. The text acknowledges that these parameters may be set by school policy but the only example of inappropriate frequency is daily reports for students beyond preschool. In the meantime, school policies regarding appropriate communication with parents have been influenced by advancing technologies to the extent that daily reports are being expected even for high school students through gradebook programs with parent portals. While administrators popularly support these programs because it makes home/school communication easier, it is also undoes much of the work that many of us are doing as educators to provide qualitative information regarding student performance. While I have had very few issues with students not understanding their grades, I get several e-mails per month from parents who have checked their children’s grades online and, without having spoken with their high schooler about the grade, are confused or upset about the numbers they have seen. I do not have enough information to know whether Nitko and Brookhart advocate gradebook technologies that enable counselors, administrators and parents to obtain students’ grades without consulting the teacher. However, I do fault their emphasis on frequency of communication, which is echoed nearly everywhere. I am still searching for an example to which the old adage regarding quality over quantity does not apply. Until then, educators (and those who write texts for educators) should recognize the importance of meaningful communication between home and school over its convenience and frequency.

Responsible and ethical assessment of students is, of course, among the primary responsibilities of educators. Nitko and Brookhart are correct in this assertion and in their description of the various duties that comprise responsible assessment. I especially agree that it is important to help students understand that assessments are opportunities to perform to their greatest ability and to share with those students what will be expected in advance of those assessment dates. However, while I agree with Nitko and Brookhart in so many ways, I maintain that we must be careful that assessment does not become so paramount in our conversations about education that we forget about the value of the immeasurables. To the greatest extent possible, we must be sure that student grades are meaningful, anchored to standards, and arrived at methodically. We also must be sure that we never communicate to students, school authorities, or parents that those grades are all that matter or that they are a measure of any student’s intelligence, potential or worth. As assessment receives an ever-increasing amount of public attention in this era of student, teacher and school accountability, we must all do our best to recognize its role in our instruction and its tremendous capacity to benefit our students’ self-knowledge, but remember that we are not graders but educators and we cannot allow the value of education to be reduced in the public consciousness to some number under—but, let’s hope, close to—100.