More on Differentiated Assessment

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a dad teach his son how to ride a bike.  The son had a helmet on, elbow pads, and training wheels on the bike.  As the dad put his son on the bike, he walked behind his son as the son rode the bike in circles in the parking lot.

Just recently, I witnessed the same father and son in the school’s parking lot and this time the training wheels were off.  The dad continued to walk behind the son and the son completed the same circles.  At one point the son fell over and the dad quickly picked him up and put him back on the bike immediately.  After about 10 minutes, where the son did not fall once, the dad stopped walking behind the child and the child started to do more complex paths on his bike.

This is how assessment should be!

It would be ridiculous to mandate that all fathers must spend exactly 10 minutes of time with their child until they stop walking behind them; as each child will require a different amount of time to learn the skill. 

It would be ludicrous to allow a son to write a multiple choice test where, if he scored over 50% (even though he wrote it is ok to play in traffic on a bicycle), the father would let him ride alone as the son “passed the test”, since the son doesn’t understand all the safety issues of riding a bike.

It would be unfortunate if all fathers were required to purchase the same bicycle since not every child is the same height, or has the lower body lengths.

Yet all of these ideas are allowed in schools, why is that?

I wonder what school would look like if instead of holding teachers accountable with mandated common assessment we instead allowed teachers to teach students “how to ride a bike”?

I believe, students would learn the skills at a deeper level before moving on, they could learn at their own pace, and each “test” would be different for each student.

Still not convinced?  Reflect on this picture as it represents the traditional testing model of students.

Problems with common assessment

I would like to challenge the idea of common assessment.  Not just common throughout a department but common even in a single classroom.  From this time further I will refer to these assessments as their true name “Standardized Assessments”.  The definition of a standardized assessment is:

a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent.

 
I have asked why do teachers give common assessment?  I will provide the two top reasons I heard, and then my counter-argument.

1) Standardized assessment allows for fair and equal assessment practices between the same courses throughout the school.

Counter: What is fair is not always equal and what is equal isn’t always fair.  If we truly want equal assessment, then should we not require all students to write with the same hand, take off their glasses, set the temperature in all the rooms to be the same, and have all students write with the same type of pencil?  I know this sounds absurd, but where does the fair and equal practice stop?  Each and every student, in my class, has a different set of needs and abilities yet these exams will force each student to be put through the same hole.  Alberta Education recently, wrote

Differentiated assessment means selecting tools and strategies to provide each student with the best opportunity to demonstrate his or her learning. As you get to know your students, and as student differences emerge, assessment naturally becomes more differentiated, because its purpose is to meet students where they are and to coach them to the next step. In this way, assessment and instruction continue to support and inform each other.

By making these decisions before ever “knowing my students” how is one to decide which would be the “best opportunity for each student to demonstrate his or her learning”?  I do not see standardized assessment as a fair and equal practice at all.

2) Standardized assessment allows for fair and equal instructional practices between courses throughout the school.

Counter: This seems like the standardized assessment is more assessing the teacher than the student now.  Even if two students, in two different classes, receive the same mark this does not guarantee the same instruction has been given.  One teacher could be “teaching to the test” and involving daily test prep activities while the other is implementing quality instruction and critical thinking.

Now, the problems I see with common assessment:

First and foremost: It is the duty and responsibility of the classroom teacher to determine how and when to assess each student.  I am confused and distraught when people, outside the class, control the assessment strategies, without even knowing the individual students they are impacting.  

Alberta Education’s ideas are:

Differentiating assessment involves rethinking the standard practice of having all students do the same assessment tasks at the same time, regardless of their individual learning needs or the learning they have already demonstrated. Rather, in this new paradigm, teachers customize the selection and use of assessment information to reflect each student’s highest level of achievement.

Also, I refer to these as standardized assessments as they are designed in such a way the class average should fall in a “reasonable” zone.  This zone may differ from teacher to teacher and from class to class but this underlying bell curve does exist.  I have heard of meetings where discussions such as “The average was low, so the test should be made easier” or “The average was too high, so we need to increase the difficulty” have been had.  This saddens me as we are requiring students to fail such that others can feel success.

Since by the definition and the manner these assessments are designed, usually, they must fall on a specific day, common to all teachers of the same course, and also consist of some mixture of the following:

·         MC 5-10 questions
·         NR 3-5 questions
·         WR 2-5 questions with bullets

Usually the test days, and requirements are decided before the first day of school

By having standardized exams, we are going against the research and knowledge of our government.  Also, it should be the freedom of the teacher to decide, and indeed, the freedom of each student to decide how and when they will be assessed on their knowledge.  Of course we all know that some people employed as teachers are of different quality, but by forcing everyone to assess, and ultimately, teach the same way it may not improve teachers of a lower quality but actually hobble the good ones.