experience. Black and Wiliam (1998) assert the impact of formative assessment: “The research … shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning. The gains in achievement appear to be quite considerable … amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions” (p. 61). It is this kind of assessment that we recreate in our classrooms to promote student learning. As Cassandra Erkens (2009a) explains, “If we understand what we are trying to accomplish instructionally with each learner … we can use the assessment process to leverage the outcome” (p. 16). When we co-construct goals alongside students, invite them to take risks, and engage in actions that will serve as a springboard for reflection, we are fostering an assessment practice that supports hope and growth. This kind of learning environment meets the needs of both ourselves and our learners and softens the edges of classroom experiences.
When we feel students are ready, we engage in summative assessment—moments when we measure progress, consistency, and independent proficiency in relation to goals. These moments are akin to the learning “performance” or “game” and require synthesis and connection making inherent in the larger learning goals. According to Richard J. Stiggins and colleagues (2004), summative assessments are designed to measure student learning and “are used to make statements of student learning status at a point in time to those outside the classroom” (p. 31). When these summative moments become a celebration of hard work, practice, feedback, and engagement, the edges remain soft for teachers and students. When they do not reflect these things, summative assessment and reporting become unclear, unfair, and convoluted. In these instances, we may find ourselves falling back on magic math to tell us how students are doing. We look to our gradebooks filled with numbers, and we depend on the calculation of a single score after averaging, weighting, and converting to tell us whether learners are proficient or not. The number of variables involved in this type of process makes the resulting score have an unclear meaning. This approach can create stress and lack of confidence for all involved, ultimately producing a hard edge. Instead, we can engage in summative practices that truly validate growth and invite us to report progress with confidence and clarity to concerned stakeholders (parents and the school community).
Why and When Are We Assessing?
Assessment doesn’t have to be a bad word. In fact, assessment should be part of the learning cycle. If assessment just equates to a report card, we need to reconsider our practices. Assessment is something we are always doing—from preassessment to formative assessment, through feedback and relearning, to observation and demonstrations of learning—and essential in supporting the human need to grow. When assessment is solely used to rank and sort students, we are risking our learners’ emotional safety and potentially stagnating opportunities for their continual development, thereby creating a hard edge. Instead, with constant engagement in assessment, we can continue to make decisions about our instruction and how to invite even more learning from all students, regardless of their ranking. Assessment should be optimistic and hold the promise of success. We have to believe all students can and will learn and that this process is never-ending. This is the nature of a student-focused, learning-driven education system. DuFour (2015) explains, “In the end, creating a learning-focused culture requires an organization to answer this question: Are we here to ensure students are taught, or are we here to ensure that our students learn?” (p. 103). We may also ask ourselves whether we are here to measure past learning or to support future learning. Is our work about building walls and documenting who climbs over them, or making sure all our learners have the tools and supports to get over any wall life places in front of them?
Being clear about our reason for assessing ensures an assessment system that is multidimensional, inclusive, proactive, reliable, accessible, and future focused. If we need to know whether a student is ready for the learning goals we are about to introduce, we can design a preassessment, which occurs before learning. If we want to ascertain the effectiveness of our daily instruction, we craft smaller formative assessments, which occur during the practice and acquisition of learning. To plan for differentiation in our instruction that is responsive to student needs, we can create a common formative assessment, which we may deliver at a key point during the learning process in order to inform the next chunk of instruction. We can engage students in self-reflection and goal setting through self-assessment several times throughout the learning journey. If we want to capture learning after much practice and movement toward proficiency, we can engage students in a summative assessment. We can use reporting to communicate student progress toward learning goals at various key points during the year. Developing a clear understanding of why we are assessing, when it best makes sense to do so, and then sharing this understanding with our learners fosters emotional safety and is vital to ensuring soft edges for everyone.
Who Are We Assessing?
One could argue that assessment in a classroom measures students’ learning and the teacher’s instruction. When teachers use assessment to augment the relationship between the learning experiences they design and the impact of those experiences on the learner, it serves the needs of both parties. Understanding ourselves as teachers is as important as understanding our learners. If we are going to respond to student needs as a result of what our assessments tell us, we also have to know our own strengths and preferences. Engaging in personal reflection is key to developing instructional practices that meet the needs of students. We must reflect every day in preparation for receiving the assessment information we gather about our students so we respond in ways that nurture the needs of both ourselves and our learners.
Knowing our learners is important in signaling when and how we should assess their learning. We must find time to know our students in all their complexity. Making time to observe them while they learn, listen to them as they interact with their peers, and support them as they take risks is all part of figuring out who they are. Knowing their strengths and challenges helps ensure our assessment practices capture their understanding fully and avoid the unnecessary hard edge of bias or privileging. It is critical that we ensure we do not inadvertently ask students to demonstrate their understanding in ways that are contrary to cultural norms (for example, self-assessment is difficult for learners from cultures where talking about oneself is considered bragging). We also have to be careful we are not framing our prompts around contexts with which they may not be familiar (for example, asking students to calculate the area of a swimming pool when they have never gone swimming in anything besides a lake). Without an awareness of our learners and their personal contexts, we could privilege certain students who have had specific experiences over those who have not. We could also require assessment processes that offer an advantage to students who have access to materials, technology, or time that others may not be able to access.
To ensure we know our students, we must also find time to talk to them about their lives outside school. It is important to find out who has supports and who doesn’t. We must ask students how much homework they have, whether they have job or childcare responsibilities, who they spend time with, what their cultural beliefs and traditions are, what technology they have access to, and how they see the world. This allows us to avoid asking more of them than their circumstances outside of school can accommodate. This way, we are also in a better position to set up our students for success.
Robinson (2015) asserts, “All students are unique individuals with their own hopes, talents, anxieties, fears, passions, and aspirations. Engaging them as individuals is the heart of raising achievement” (p. 77). Knowing our students enables us to understand when and how to encourage risk taking and provides insights into their beliefs about themselves and their abilities. When we know our students, we understand the roadblocks preventing their success and can identify the best supports to help them create new stories about their potential.
What Are We Assessing?
We assess a myriad of things inside our schools. We assess students’ academic growth and behaviors. We assess their ability to apply strategies to new learning experiences and to comply with our requests. We assess their willingness to take risks and their ability to work well with others. This range of assessment on a
