Chapter 15: Assessment - Yikes!

by April

I have to admit that assessment is an area that I've always found to be intimidating. Obviously I did not give grades in preschool but I had to keep written observations and be able to talk to parents at conference time about their child's social/emotional skills, fine/gross motor skills, academic knowledge (letter recognition, counting, etc...) and self-help skills. I was always nervous about being accurate and fair. And I did recognize times when I let personal feelings such as frustrations about a student's behavior get in the way of accurate assessment. Even doing "peer-reviews" in this class has been uncomfortable because I recognize the subjective nature of it.

I was surprised by the extreme differences of grades listed on page 559 for the same essay tests when graded by different people. I assumed there would be some differences but a grade of 64% from one teacher and 98% from another is incredible! I can think of times when I've turned in a paper and thought, "That was not good." I was later surprised by a high grade on it. This again brings out the subjective nature of grading, especially when you are grading someone's writing. I do think using rubrics can be very helpful. I especially liked the idea of having students write their names on the back of their paper so you can grade them anonymously. Of course we'd all like to consider ourselves above personal bias but let's face it, we're human.

It was good to see that clear feedback is valued as well as an opportunity to learn and try again. It's not always easy to figure out exactly why you got the grade you did so detailed feedback is really helpful. I just sent an e-mail to Professor Dunn to say thanks for the specific APA-related feedback. It helps me learn what I'm doing wrong and how exactly to fix it.

Lastly, I just have to comment on using performance-based assessment. I'm not saying this is a bad way to assess. I'm sure it's a great way to assess. However, when I think of performance-based assessment all I can think of are my "juries" in college where I had to perform three (usually foreign language) classical pieces in front of the voice faculty. The thought alone makes me want to vomit. We worry about test-anxiety for our students. For some of us, performance anxiety is much higher!