Teacher Assessment Techniques

by
Michael D. King

After the learning task is determined, the lesson developer should decide what
student learning skills will be measured. The decision on the measuring of content
standards will determine the overall development of the assessment strategy.
Methods including: writing samples, portfolios, rubrics, interviews, observations,
surveys, and tests should be considered. Lesson developers should remember that
assessment is only as good as the purpose of the learning task, and why it is an
effective assessment of the standards of learning.

When assessing student performance, teachers should be cognizant of students’

success rates by utilizing fair grading practices. Assessment should be the basis for
instruction, and teachers should design their lessons and units around specific
learning objectives. Periodically throughout the school year, teachers should review
and give meaningful feedback to students regarding their individual performance
through various methods of communication including achievement test, individual
test results, benchmark assessments, cumulative grades, and project evaluations.
Parents are to be notified of their child’s performance through midterm/nine-week
reports and parent/teacher conferences.

Assessment strategies are important factors to planning. Planning a lesson should

start with the assessment. This may be contrary to what has been originally thought
to be the first step—establishing the objective. This section explains why this is so;
it also includes information on the purpose of assessment and on how to design
assessments that match desired outcomes.

Assessment is a process that notifies the students and the teacher of the level of
learning that the students have achieved. Teachers are responsible for designing
assessment tools that evaluate student learning. The most commonly used method
of assessment is the pretest. This method allows the teacher to assess each
student’s level of learning on a particular learning objective before the lesson
begins. Consequently, the teacher can set the learning objective at an appropriate
level for the students, adjusting whenever necessary for the students’ individual
learning needs

The second part of the assessment of students occurs when the teacher reviews
individual student folders to determine the skill level of each student. This is simply
accomplished by the teacher reviewing a student’s accumulative folder and
recording any deficiencies that the student may have experienced in past learning.
This type of individual review allows the teacher to plan for additional support
structures for students identified as needing them. These support structures could
include special classes, additional help before or after school, or special attention
given to a student whenever content is introduced. This approach is commonly
termed the diagnostic approach to student assessment.

In most traditional settings, teachers do not assess student abilities at the

beginning of a school term. This omission results from the erroneous idea that
teachers should not judge a student at the beginning of a school term but should
instead wait to discover the student’s level of skill attainment. Using this approach,
teachers often do not discover a student’s deficiencies until the middle of the school
year, when the introduction of new skills is at its highest level. To be effective in the
diagnostic approach to assessment, the teacher needs to know before the school
year starts what students’ performance levels are so that timely and necessary
adjustments in content selection and activity design can be made.

Designing assessment strategies is one of the most complex tasks for teachers to
achieve. Recently, new strategies for student assessment have emerged that go
beyond traditional assessments. These include alternative assessment strategies
(also called authentic assessment and performance-based assessment), which allow
students to demonstrate their learning in a real-life application. These types of
assessments, which require the teacher and the students to go beyond the
traditional paper/pencil technique, can bring about some of the most powerful
learning in the classroom.

In any case, when reviewing a teacher’s methods of assessment, these

considerations should be made. First of all, the assessment should include a direct
correlation to the desired learning; in other words, an assessment is fair because it
measures only what was actually taught and does not attempt to trick or mislead.
Another variable is the percentage of students who are succeeding at the learning.
Assessment and instruction are an ongoing process, and effective teachers
continually monitor the success rate for every student in the class, reteaching
whenever necessary and providing individual attention when the concepts are not
mastered by certain students. In the traditional classroom setting, teachers assign
grades or grade averages to determine the student success rate. It is the
evaluator’s responsibility to ensure that teachers are assessing student
performance correctly and that they are using a variety of approaches to
assessment design.

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS FOR TEACHER ASSESSMENT

There are a number of different ways by which the cognitive coach can guide
teacher performance in this area. These include student success rates as reflected
in their grades (A, B, C, etc.); the teacher’s utilization of alternative assessment
strategies; and the teacher’s utilization of diagnostic information to assess whole-
class competencies and individual student skill development. One method of
guiding the teacher’s ability to implement assessment strategies is to have the
teacher reflect on methods of assessment through the reflective questions
represented (Exhibit 2-1) Reflective Questions for Teacher Assessment.

Exhibit 2-1
Reflective Questions for Teacher Assessment
How do you use assessment strategies to plan for instruction?
How often do you share diagnostic/evaluative information with individual
students? What methods do you use to share this information with your
students?
What methods do you use to evaluate daily student performance in your
classroom?
Discuss the process you use to determine student grades.
What methods do you use to encourage quality work from your students?
Discuss how you use each of the following to assess and increase student
performance:
o standardized tests
o criterion-referenced tests
o teacher-made tests
o performance-based projects and activities
How many grades do you take weekly? Are tests weighted differently than
daily grades?
How do you prepare students to take tests?
How do you determine that your instruction was effective?
What do you do when your assessments show that most of your students did
not master