Educational assessment 1

Why educational assessment is limited in today’s programs

In recent years, educational assessment has received a lot of attention from

administrators, teachers, students, and parents in how schools remain accountable for student

achievement. Since George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on

January 8, 2002, standardized testing has become the focus of much debate. Even before NCLB,

high-stakes testing (HST) has been highly criticized for its shortcomings in measuring student

achievement while having such an impact on the decision-making processes that schools face

(i.e., funding, teacher promotions, etc.). With so much focus on standardized testing, it is of little

surprise that degree programs often neglect educational assessment as a complement to

educational testing. That is, instead of using HST as a single measurement tool for making key

educational decisions, schools incorporate a mixture of assessment tools (i.e., formative,

summative, and diagnostic assessments) in determining the best option to take in the future in

pursuit of improving student achievement.

Before addressing various language programs, some definitions related to testing and

assessment might be helpful. In the classroom, assessment can be divided between summative

and formative assessment. Fisher and Frey (2007) define formative assessment as a way of

improving instruction and providing student feedback whereby students self-monitor their own

understandings of concepts throughout a unit in order for teachers to check their level of

understanding. In contrast, they define summative assessment as a measure of student

competency whereby students gauge their own progress toward course or grade-level goals and

benchmarks at the end of a unit or course in order for teachers to grade, promote, and rank

students. Put differently, HST and standardized tests implemented per NCLB – by themselves –
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are summative assessments that rank students and have little-to-nothing to do with the validity of

instruction or the level of student understanding.

Language learning programs today often disregard the importance of educational

assessment when preparing pre-service and in-service language educators. Considering five

different universities in the United States, one can see that educational assessment is typically

limited to one method course at the undergraduate level and one assessment course at the

graduate level (see table 1).

Table 1 Cal State LA University of Carroll College Goshen College Anaheim

Utah University
Degree MA TESOL BA TESOL BA TESOL BA TESOL MA TESOL
Courses Language Methodology Methodology Methodology Language
Testing Course Course Course Course Testing
Note. Information was taken from each respective university website, 2009. Course

Albeit scarce, these assessment courses do focus on formative assessment as a means for

improved student achievement. However, the question becomes whether these programs are

allowing enough time for pre-service and in-service language educators to learn not only

alternative assessments but why they are assessing in the first place.

Teachers assess students for a variety of reasons. Popham (2008) distinguishes between

“yesteryear’s” answers to “today’s” answers as follows:

 “Yesteryear’s answers as to why teachers assess students

o Diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses

o Monitoring students’ progress

o Assigning grades

o Determining one’s own instructional effectiveness

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 Today’s answers as to why teachers assess students

o Influencing public perceptions of educational effectiveness

o Helping evaluate teachers

o Clarifying teachers’ instructional intentions” (pp. 8-15)

Certainly adding today’s reasons for assessing to those from the past has reflected a level of

accountability that did not exist before. Thus, formative and summative assessment supplies

information to external stakeholders (i.e., parents, community, etc.), administrators, and teachers

and students in order to make more informed decisions that best result in improving student

achievement. Since TESOL (i.e., teaching English to students of other languages) programs are

not allowing for much time in their curriculum dedicated to assessment, many of the reasons

teachers assess students are being overlooked. For example, professional development and

building common assessments are directly related to classroom assessment being implemented

throughout the school. Instead of each teacher assessing and instructing in isolation, assessment

results are shared throughout the faculty as a form of community of practice.

Another reason why language programs limit their exposure to assessment is likely due to

a more traditional rationale of testing. That is, assessment is planned after instruction as opposed

to before it. Instead of assessment and instruction being two separate processes, formative

assessment merges the two in a more dynamic and personalized way. Assessment is planned

before instruction so that expected performance goals are established allowing learners to have a

direction as information and feedback are negotiated between the language learner and educator.

The impact that ongoing assessment has on instruction is usually not part of graduate assessment

or undergraduate method courses in a significant way.

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Standardized testing, high-stakes testing, and traditional rationales for educational

assessment has negatively impacted TESOL training programs that today are limited to a single

graduate course or undergraduate methods course which fail to provide the pre-service or in-

service language educator the means for learning how to best align assessment with curriculum

and instruction. Instead, language educators who use standardized testing as one of many

assessment tools used to measure student achievement will be better equipped to not only rank

language learners with their classmates but also to measure their level of understanding,

knowledge, skills, and disposition in a more profound way. Planning assessment before

instruction implies an assessment for learning as opposed to an assessment of learning. The

ongoing information and feedback that teachers provide language learners is a constant

negotiation that takes into account the classroom – and all of its diversity – as a learning

community.
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References

Anaheim University. (2009). Retrieved March 16, 2009 from

http://www.anaheim.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=516&Itemid=1
87

Cal State LA. (2009). Retrieved March 16, 2009 from

http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/aa/dcc/indexgrad.htm

Carroll College. (2009). Retrieved March 16, 2009 from

http://www.carroll.edu/academics/education/tesol.cc

Fisher, D. and Frey, N. (2007). Checking for understandings: Formative assessment techniques
for your classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Goshen College. (2009). Retrieved March 16, 2009 from http://www.goshen.edu/english/tesol

Kubiszyn, T. and Borich, G. (2007). Educational testing and measurement: Classroom

application and practice. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Jossey-Bass Education.

Popham, W. (2008). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. New York: Pearson.

The University of Utah: Department of linguistics. (2009). Retrieved on March 16, 2009 from
http://www.hum.utah.edu/index.php?pageId=911