Brittany Davis

Philosophy of Assessment
Learners need endless feedback more than they need endless teaching. Grant
Wiggins. In order to give students this endless feedback that they need to be successful in
the classroom, teachers must be constantly assessing the student. The purpose of giving
assessments is not to just assign the students a grade for their report card. This is actually
the last thing a teacher should be focusing on. Assessment is the ongoing process of
gathering, analyzing, and reflecting on the evidence to track student progress towards
their educational goals and overall achievement. The purpose of an assessment is to
improve the students future learning by showing what their strengths and weaknesses
are, pin-pointing an area for improvement. It is crucial for a teacher to constantly adapt to
each learning style through assessing each student based on his or her needs.
There are a variety of assessments that a teacher can use to evaluate a students
understanding of a learning objective. Formative assessments are ongoing evaluations
that are given at any stage of the learning process to monitor students learning. This
constant feedback allows a teacher to differentiate instruction and improve student
achievement. It helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas
that need work. Formative assessments are low stake assessments, which means they
have low or no point value. There can be formal formative assessments that provide
actual evidence about a students learning such as a worksheets, journals, exit slips, quiz,
and graphic organizers. Its important, as a teacher, to analyze the information collected
from students and plan an action to help the students achieve learning goals. Informal
formative assessments could be something along the lines of observations, questioning,
and class discussions. The teacher collects information from students in the form of a
verbal response. The teacher would then act on the fly by recognizing students responses
and adjusting the lesson to accommodate to the students understanding.
Summative assessments are very different however. These assessments are high
stake evaluations that provide opportunities for students to show what they learned at the
end of the learning objective or unit. When seen in the classroom it might look something
like a final project, unit test, paper, presentation, etc. It measures the effectiveness of the
curriculum and the educators instruction. Even though summative assessments are the
end result in what a student should know up to that point, formative assessments should
have more emphasis on them in the classroom. In Chapter 4 of Marzano, he focuses a lot
on designing your own assessments as a teacher. He states that typically teachers design
their assessments a week or less ahead of time (pg. 62). However, it is extremely
important to create the assessments right away when creating a lesson plan. The lesson
plan should be based off of the standard, which then links to the assessment. What do you
want your students to know by the end of the lesson? When a teacher creates their own
assessment, they should use Tier I,II, and III questions. Tier I are the basic questions,
focusing on things such as vocabulary or simple ideas that most students understand. Tier
II questions address more complex ideas such as applying their knowledge of tier I
questions to answer a multiple-choice question. Lastly, a teacher will really know if a
student owns the knowledge if they are able to answer or perform tier III questions or
tasks. Tier III require students to use their knowledge of tier I and II questions to make
inferences and perform a task, or answer a prompt, that goes beyond what was taught in

class. This last tier is a true indicator whether the child understands the information or not
so this is why it is essential for a teacher to include all three of these types of questions in
an assessment.
Another form of assessment that a teacher can use is a curriculum-based
assessment. This type of assessment is useful to measure the effectiveness of the
instruction given to them by the teacher. It will show the teacher what changes he or she
needs to make in their instruction to improve student achievement. An example of a CBA
is a DIBELS test (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills). This specific test
focuses on different reading measures found in the curriculum such as initial sound
fluency, phoneme segmentation, and letter naming fluency. The more frequent these tests
are administered, the more accurate the estimates of academic growth will be. However,
there still should be a balance between instruction and assessment.
Many people believe grading and assessing are interchangeable and mean the
same thing. This impression, however, is often mistaken. The goal of grading is to
evaluate individual students knowledge and performance. Grades are not always the
most reliable system to measure learning however. There may be criteria such as
participation, attendance, extra credit, and effort, which are not direct measures of
learning. When parents get their childs report card, they may not realize that their child is
struggling with reading because all they see is an A in this category, just because of the
outliers like attendance that bring their grade up. It might be helpful to create a separate
grading system for the extra measures such as the participation and behavior, that way the
parents, child, and teacher get a clear assessment of how the student is doing
academically. Assessments are different than grading because the primary goal of
assessing is to improve student learning. Grading can be incorporated in assessing a
student, but assessment also involves evaluations of student learning that are not graded,
such as informal formative assessments. Assessment goes beyond just grading by
examining the students growth and using this to improve instruction.
An instrument that is helpful for a teacher, as well as a parent, to see the growth
and development of a childs learning is a standard-based report card. On the report card,
each subject area is divided into certain criteria and concrete skills that are based off of
the common core standards and what the child should know. By assessing each child
based on these standards, it will provide us with the information of whether all students
are being exposed to the same curriculum and learning what they should in each grade.
With this grading system, parents are more aware of what their child is struggling with so
they can assist them at home. By using this system, it will help close the gap in
achievement among different groups of students. This grade system is a very effective
grading technique and should be used in all schools throughout all grades. High schools
typically stick to the traditional report cards that assign one letter grade to each subject.
This type of grading is more subjective rather than objective, like the standard-based
report card. The traditional report cards do not offer as much information as the standardbased; therefore the standard-based report cards should be universal in the school system.
Even though its more labor-intensive, these report cards are the way to go!
Another labor-intensive, but very effective system to use is RTII (Response to
Instruction and Intervention). This is the approach to provide early academic and
behavioral support to struggling students, rather than waiting for a child to fail before
offering help. All students are screened throughout the school year to see which students

are at risk for not meeting grade level academic standards. RTII has three tiers that the
students fall in: Tier 1 is core instruction, which is where 85% of the general education
students fall, giving universal screening and benchmark assessments. Tier 2 is targeted
group intervention where 10% of the students need clarification and will get pulled out
for group instruction. Tier 3 involves 5% of the students in which they will get pulled out
of the classroom completely. These students are most likely your special education
students or students with learning disabilities who will receive weekly progress
monitoring. RTII is a way to recognize struggling students and help them before its too
late.
One way to recognize these struggling students is by going through the
assessment process. The assessment process is very similar to the process of doctor
appointments. They both involve multiple steps to get to a common goal, to better the
lives of an individual student or patient. The first thing that a doctor does during an
appointment is questioning the patient to figure out what is wrong with them. This is the
first step in an assessment process, such as formative informal observations, to figure out
what a child knows or needs to learn. Both the doctor and the teacher need to document
these observations. Then they need to analyze this data to figure out where to go next.
The doctor would diagnose the patient with an illness and the teacher would evaluate the
data to figure out what type of test is needed for the student. If a student seems to be
struggling academically the teacher can give a diagnostic test to evaluate the students
learning abilities and disabilities. This diagnostic test will be able to help the teacher
pinpoint the learning problem and suggest individual learning paths a child should take
from there. Another test that can be ordered is a benchmark test. This benchmark test is
administered throughout the school year that gives teachers immediate feedback on how
students are meeting the academic standards. It shows the students growth throughout the
year and helps the teacher to design the curriculum to meet the learning needs of each
child. The teacher can also provide formative or summative tests, depending on what type
of results and information they are needing at the time. They would then reanalyze the
results of these assessments given, just like a doctor would do, and take a course of
action.
The results from these assessments can be used to guide classroom instruction via
small groups by grouping and regrouping based on the students mastery of an objective.
Grouping and regrouping is essential regarding assessments because it meets the
academic, social, and emotional needs of each student. It allows the teacher to zoom in on
a specific need of one student. This is just one example of an action to take to adapt to the
learning needs of the children. The students would then take another benchmark, or in a
doctors case have a check-up, to see whether the instruction is working or if the teacher
needs to change the teaching methods. This procedure would then start back at the
beginning with questioning and answering. This assessment process is the most effective
way to truly link to RTII.
Our main concern as teachers is to educate the future students of tomorrow and
prepare them for unlimited future opportunities. John Dewey once said, If we teach
todays students as we taught yesterdays, we rob them of tomorrow. He is saying how
we have to constantly be adjusting our teaching methods and strategies to fit the needs of
the learners, instead of just using last years lesson and taking the easy way out. The
students of the 21st century learn a lot different than students from the 20th century. We

have a variety of resources right at the tips of our fingers, so why not use it? Marzanos
Research Laboratory showed the importance of retention rates. Coming in at a 90%
retention rate, teaching others or the immediate use of their learning is the highest
percentage of how the brain learns. The second retention rate is 75%, which is practice by
doing. This involves hands-on learning. In this digital age, these new learners must be
taught how to incorporate the 4 Cs of learning and innovation skills: Creativity and
innovation, Critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and collaboration.
Possessing these skills will prepare the students to succeed in the 21st century. A teacher
of these skills must constantly assess oneself to make sure he/she is providing the
students with a contemporary education. Based on this assessment, the teacher can
change their style of teaching to coincide with the new learning environments.
Todays 21st century classrooms are designed to educate the future generations to
come. The classroom environment should be set up to support the teaching and learning
of the 21st century skills. The students should be provided with opportunities to learn in
real world contexts such as Project-Based learning (PBL) or other forms of hands-on
active learning. This will allow the students to practice their innovation skills by
developing their creativity, thinking critically, collaborating with their peers, and
effectively communicating their finished product. Rubrics are a perfect assessment tool
that can be used to evaluate these projects, as well as providing the students with a guide
for the criteria that is expected from them. In order to enhance the digital aspect of the
21st century classroom, the teacher should provide quality learning tools, technologies,
and resources for the students to use. If you go onto my Pinterest board,
https://www.pinterest.com/bdavis2121/assessment-apps/, you will find a variety of
assessment apps and tools that can be used in the 21st century classroom. Some examples
of these tools are digital portfolios to organize students work, fluency assessment apps,
interactive whiteboards, running record calculators, and Plickers to poll your class
without the use of student devices. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember.
Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin. There are multiple opportunities to involve
students nowadays with hands-on project-based assessments. Us teachers need to zone in
on this realization. But we also have to realize that there are a variety of different learners
such as kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.
Ivar Lovaas once said, If a child cannot learn in the way we teach we must
teach in a way a child can learn. This statement shows how we have to adapt our
instruction to meet the needs of individual learners. Developing adaptations for tests for
special education students is an essential skill every teacher should possess. Not every
child learns the same way so it is important for the teacher to adapt and differentiate the
lesson and tests for these students. There are many adaptations that a teacher can make to
accommodate a student, but it is all based on their personal needs and learning styles.
Some adaptations can be as simple as moving a distractible student to the front of the
classroom or away from windows or sharpeners. When making adaptations for an IEP, it
is important that the teacher does not confuse the terms modification and
accommodations. Modifications are where a teacher would actually change the
curriculum and the content that is being taught to match the individuals needs. An
example of this could be making an assignment easier so the student is not doing the
same level of work as other students. An assessment accommodation is where a teacher
would change the way a test is administered. The test can be adapted through categories

such as setting, timing, scheduling, presentation, or response. Adapting the setting may
include administering the test individually or with special lighting. The student may be
given more time to take the test or be provided frequent breaks if necessary. Inclusion in
the regular education classroom is more frequent nowadays. Just because a child has
severe disabilities or needs modifications to the general curriculum does not mean that he
or she should be removed from the general education class.
In order to reach all learners, effective teachers use differentiated instruction
strategies. These techniques are meant to accommodate each individual students learning
style, readiness, and interest level. It is extremely important for teachers to recognize and
attend to the differences in their students ability levels. The instructional approach
should not stick to one-size fits all idea. In order to recognize a students ability level, the
teacher must pre-assess to understand their students starting point through on-going
assessments and make adjustments along the way.
Assessments are probably one of the most important aspects in a classroom
environment and can be beneficial in many ways, if used properly. Teachers have every
type of assessment right at the palm of their hands; they just need to grab it. These
assessments can include formative, summative, CBA, benchmarks, diagnostic, and many
other useful evaluations. It is detrimental to the students learning that we adapt our
instruction to meet the needs of the students, whether it is through academic, special
education needs, or the needs of 21st century learners. The all-encompassing key to
finding out how to successfully adapt and modify a lesson is through assessment.