Assessment or Testing...Exactly what are we doing and when?

A recent discussion about children and literacy assessment in my grad school class prompted me to reflect on the ways in which we assess students, primarily in high school foreign languages, as that is what I currently teach, but also in other high school courses.

One of the first things we learn is that we should assess students regularly to gauge student learning and adjust instruction. Testing should be an infrequent occurrence that determines mastery of concepts. Unfortunately, we have now blended the two, using testing as assessments of learning AND determinant of mastery. We must reevaluate our definition of and purpose for assessment and/or testing.

It is my observation that in high school foreign language classes, teachers assess students throughout the course using multiple types of assessments: reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar exercises, cultural projects and products, vocabulary matching quizzes, etc. At the end of the year, however, many revert to the standardized form of multiple choice and true/false "testing" as a way to determine that students have mastered a certain percentage of the course material. What skills, then, are being tested, and what exactly are they supposed to demonstrate mastery of...guessing skills, process of elimination skills, recognizing context clues? This phenomenon is not isolated to the languages; teachers of biology, through no design of their own in NC, are also guilty of this practice. Throughout the year, the students learn about life forms and perform experiments in line with their learning. In my school, most of the teachers engage the students in problem-based learning. At the end of the year, however, the students take a multiple-choice, End-of-Course test that has no performance component. How do we know that the students have mastered the skills necessary in the field of biology and not just memorized the steps of the scientific method and an extensive vocabulary list?

In all of my years as a student, and my six years as a teacher, I have not yet seen a multiple-choice test that can truly evaluate mastery of skills, except for test-taking skills. True mastery comes in spontaneous use and verbalization of the concept and skill. How can you bubble that in on a sheet? So, this idea of true mastery brings me back to my initial question: How, when, and why to assess? Testing, in the one-size-fits-all form, is irrelevant, unless you are on an assembly line.

So, what I am suggesting here is a focus shift, if you will. Let's take what we consider "testing"--paper/pencil, one right answer--and use that as our formative assessments. A student can demonstrate recognition of vocabulary and knowledge of the steps in the scientific process on a bubble sheet before we teach them to think critically about how to use that knowledge and integrate it into hands-on production activities. If our goal is, at the end of the year, to know that students can communicate in the target language, shouldn't our final assessment require them to demonstrate that ability, or better yet, shouldn't they be able to choose how they demonstrate that ability? Thinking, processing, and communicating cannot be measured by a question that has only one right answer.

How did we, as a culture, decide that valid summative assessments look like the format of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and ask students if a, b, c, or d is their final answer? Maybe, just maybe, a little more explanation is needed for the student to show what they've learned. If we can grade projects, essays, lab write-ups, dance routines, presentations, blogs, etc. all year long, why do they disappear at the end of the course? It's time to stop doing what is convenient for us and do what makes sense. Decide what really matters and assess it in a way that is relevant and demonstrative of true mastery. Otherwise our kids will continue to be "tested" like lab rats and will gain very little from the experience.