Assessment Reflection

Assessment is the link that allows educators to know the extent to which what is being taught by teachers is being learned by students.  Without assessment, or with poorly designed assessment, there is little way to know whether teaching is resulting in learning.  As a school’s raison d’être is to educate students, student assessment is fundamental to the evaluation of a school’s effectiveness.

In working my way through the EDL program, I find myself agreeing more and more with Kim Marshall.  In his Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation, Marshall (2009) argues that research suggests two types of assessment hold the key in improving teaching and learning: formative, classroom assessments, and interim assessments.  These assessments, if properly aligned to instruction, allow teachers to adjust their instruction to impact student learning, before summative assessments are administered.

Marshall looks at other student achievement data and assessment protocols, including report card grades, student work (the LASW protocol), projects, portfolios, and summative assessments from prior years/terms.  While noting some value to each mode of assessment, Marshall ultimately finds each lacking.  I agree with his specific arguments and overall rationale: if the purpose of assessment is to provide a feedback loop to link teaching and learning, only assessments that can provide timely, actionable feedback that can inform instruction are essential.

The e-portfolio process has impacted my thinking by reinforcing my prior views on assessment.   Marshall finds portfolios a “helpful way to gather and evaluate” student work, but a “cumbersome [way] for teacher teams . . . to get specific diagnostic information.”  (p. 119).  I agree that the e-portfolio process allows me to collect the best of my work from two years of study, and thus has value in accumulating examples of my learning in one place.  This is true also for students in grades K-12.  I have doubts, though, about its utility as a learning tool for students.  Students need extensive rubrics for each part of the portfolio; student use of the rubrics may be more effective if used for each part of the portfolio collection.  Also, the presentation of the portfolio is also a major part of the overall evaluation of the portfolio in many cases, even though the presentation skills are often not part of the unit/lesson objectives, nor are they specifically taught.

Another concern I have about electronic portfolios specifically is one of equity.  Before one assigns an e-portfolio, one has to consider the level of access to computers and the internet, as well as the level of technology skills of the students.  In my school, we do not have enough working laptops for an entire class of thirty, we have a “computer lab” of six machines, and just over half of the students report to have reliable access to computers and the internet at home.   It is a challenge even to have every student in a class print an assignment.   Requiring an e-portfolio when not all students have access to the technology necessary to complete the assignment is not equitable.

I am also concerned about issues of equity when an assignment assumes, but does not teach, technology skills.  For an e-portfolio to be a valid assignment, the various skills necessary to complete the assignment must be explicitly taught, embedded in the various assignments leading up to the final e-portfolio.  I, personally, have struggled with the technology to complete this assignment; I have trouble manipulating the varied forms of data I need to upload.  If the presentation of the e-portfolio, and not just the content, is to be part of the assessment, I would want to make sure that a technology skill is paired with the content skills I teach in each lesson leading up to the final e-portfolio.  And to teach the technology skills, one needs daily access to the hardware, a concern I have already noted.

References

Marshall, K. (2009).  Rethinking teacher supervision and evaluation: How to work smart, build    collaboration, and close the achievement gap.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.