The Impact of Assessment THE IMPACT OF ASSESSMENT ON CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

THE IMPACT OF ASSESSMENT ON CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION by Michael Phan UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDIES

2012 by Michael Phan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Impact of Assessment Introduction This essay contains a discussion of three researchers: Guskey, OConnor, and Almeida whose work appears in Reeves (2007) Ahead of the Curve. The essay will consist of an outline of the philosophies of each of the researcher, including details on how each researcher approaches apply to modern classrooms and learning institutions. Each researcher will be

discussed in a separate section and the conclusion will make comparisons and contrasts between all of the researchers. The Impact of Assessment on Curriculum and Instruction Using Assessments to Improve Teaching and Learning Traditionally, in education settings, an assessment metric was used almost exclusively for students. Teachers have been subject to a rigorous regiment of assessment. One reason for the spread of the culture of assessment as Guskey (2007) pointed out, there are links between student outcomes and teaching development. Guskey argued, it is necessary to understand assessment as a holistic context and realize that what is truly being assessed is a complex system. The system includes many components: Teacher skill, individual student motivation, parent involvement, and innumerable other moving parts make up the overall context of education. Indeed, it is a mistake for educators to focus exclusively on assessment of students. To do so, is to wrongly assume a black box context in which each student has perfect freedom, within hard cognitive constraints, to achieve certain results. Education, however, has always been aware there is a complex interplay between the dependent variable of student achievement and the various independent variables that lie in the background and foreground. Guskey implored educator leaders to think of the teacher and the student as a symbiotic unit. It may be the students success that is the focus of measurement and policy but assessment

The Impact of Assessment of the student only makes full sense in the context of teacher performance. The implication of this insight is that teacher assessment and student need to be mapped on to each other. Administrators in particular need to make these two normally separate bodies of data part of the same systemso that, for example, it would be possible to track the impact of the performance of teacher Y on student X. Naturally, there is some potential for teachers to resist this kind of holistic assessment because it seems to make teachers more responsible for negative, as well as positive, student outcomes, and it is a natural response for a member of any bureaucracy to shield his or her from negative scrutiny. Guskey (2007) was not, however, calling for a simplistic correlation of teachers performances with students performances. Instead, Guskey beseech educators to consider a system of assessment that is more holistic in which teaching performance should be considered to be a partcertainly not the whole part, and not in every caseof students assessment.

Guskey, however, did not fully explore the methodological consequences of his excellent point about assessment. There are still many hard questions to be answered. Should teacher and student assessment coexist in any quantitative way? What role can the qualitative evaluation of a third party, such as a principal, have on making the teacher-student assessment more clear? There is no single set of answers to questions such as these and Guskey is aware that schools are going to have work out solutions for themselves, often based on unique factors. Guskeys work, however, is most useful as a general guide to a new kind of sensitivity in assessment, one that no longer treats teacher and student assessment as separated from each other; many other scholars have also reached similar conclusions about the holistic and systemic nature of assessment.

The Impact of Assessment The Last Frontier: Tackling the Grading Dilemma OConnor is an educational researcher and consultant who has branded himself as the

grade doctor. OConnors most influential work came in 1995, when he published a set of eight guidelines for grading, and his work since that time (including his chapter in Reeves 2007) has remained focused on teaching teachers how to grade in ways that encourage learning. In this way, OConnor addressed an old concern of education: The potential of grades to become a black box. According to OConnor (2007) observed that grading should not be opaque to the student and should be the springboard to further learning rather than a simple punishment or reward. OConnor provided eight specific guidelines for achieving the goal of grading for learning. These goals are summarized as follows: Table 1: OConnors Eight Goals for Grading: Goal 1 Content Break out a single grade into multiple rubric categories so that student can achieve more precise knowledge of where his or her need to improve. Creating multiple grades in place of a single grade also reduces a grades shock value and turns the 2 3 4 focus on to learning rather than obsessing over a single number. Abandon curve-based grading in favor of criterion-based grading. Base grades on achievement only so that students also know exactly what is being measured. Do not grade everything that the student does; sample students work to give grades. This way, student will focus on learning rather than obsessing over 5 6 7 whatever counts in a final grade. Grade in pencil so that changes can be made more easily. Do not crunch numbers to favor students. Understand the science of grading. Know the purposes of different kinds of

The Impact of Assessment assessment, set targets, and have a clear purpose. Involve students in assessment. OConnors (2007) work was highly applicable to all classrooms and school environments in which formal assessment is used. OConnor pointed out that, in many cases, teachers are trained and placed into classrooms without a precise and evidence-based understanding of how to grade, and that in other cases educational policy itself is behind the

times (as with the application of curves in place of criterion-based grading). To no surprise, then, that grading has become both a black box exercise and a means of re-orienting students away from genuine learning and towards achievement anxiety. The true strength of OConnors (2007) work is to make assessment more accurate in a series of simple steps. Teachers who implement this system will transform the grade from a mere number into a genuine tool for learning. For example, by applying the first goal for grading (see Table 1), teachers will give students much more accurate feedback on exactly what they need to improve. One hurdle in the path of OConnors (2007) system was that there is an embedded culture of traditional grading in terms of standardized tests at every level, all the way up to graduate school. Sadly, in all too many contexts, educators must weight students against each other in simple ways, which means the prominence of the traditional grade. In nonstandardized contexts, OConnors approach would surely be a superior strategy. The Journey Toward Effective Assessment for English Language Learners Almeidas contribution to the Reeves (2007) textbook is a discussion of effective assessment for English language learners. This topic is a controversial one that ties into some disputes that are ongoing in the field of linguistics. The crux of the problem is that there is no clear consensus on whether learners true cognitive performance is being measured in contexts outside his or her native language. For example: When a student speaker of English as a second

The Impact of Assessment language, he or she does poorly on a particular test because it is mainly his or her language skill rather than subject-matter knowledgethat has been assessed. It may also be the case that a students weakness in English, however, is actually creating cognitive problems for the student that show up in the assessment. Linguistics refers to these two positions as the linguistic interdependence hypothesis and the logistic threshold hypothesis. According to Ng and Renshaws (2008) linguistic interdependence theory show that postulates that L1 and L2 skills are interdependent

Experience with one language can promote the development of cognitiveacademic proficiency across languagesprovided that there is adequate exposure to L2 (p. 207). While Vygotsky (1962) argued, if the interdependence hypothesis is true, students can transfer to the new language the system of meaning he or she already possesses in his or her own. The reverse is also truea foreign language facilitates mastering the higher forms of the native language (p. 110). By contrast, the linguistic threshold hypothesis holds that students must achieve threshold levels of bilingual proficiency to avoid detrimental effects on cognition and potentially to allow positive effects (Appel & Muysken 2006, p. 112). These topics are directly relevant to Almeidas (2007) research. Almeida offered twelve distinct approaches to assessing English as a Second Language learner precisely because she understood there is a major controversy about the validity of simple numerical assessment of such learners. As Almeida pointed out, non-native speakers of English have a host of special linguistic, cognitive, pedagogical, and cultural needs that are currently being ignored and neglected in the rush to impose traditional methods of assessment. Even schools that cannot apply all of Almeidas twelve forms of assessment, perhaps because of the lack of trained personnel, can still benefit from the insight that assessment of non-native speakers simply fails to

The Impact of Assessment differentiate between linguistic, cognitive, and cultural forms of competence in what is being

tested. Indeed, more sensitive and multifarious means of assessment of this population are called for. Conclusion Despite differences in their agendas, methodologies, and emphases, Guskey (2007), OConnor (2007), and Almeida (2007) have agreed that assessment is an indispensable part of the educational enterprise, a tool without which neither effective learning nor effective teaching can take place. Each researcher though, has also identified nagging problems with traditional approaches to assessment. One concept that applies to each of the researchers orientations is holistic. Guskey suggested that educator to consider student assessment as part of a larger context, one that includes teacher assessment. OConnor observed that educator need to approach grading as an exercise in breaking down a single grade into a series of more helpful, more specific measurements on which can help the student focus learning. Almeida emphasized that educator to consider the drawbacks of any assessment of non-native English speakers that does not take the fuller context of bilingualism into account. Naturally, because of each research different focuses, the three researchers discussed in this essay provide different suggestions, methodologies, and emphases; however, each research has a common aim of promoting a more holistic understanding and practice of assessment.

References Almeida, L. (2007). The journey toward effective assessment for English language learners. In D. Reeves (Ed.), Ahead of the curve: The power of assessment to transform teaching and learning (pp. 147-164). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

The Impact of Assessment Appel, R. & Muysken, P. (2006). Language contact and bilingualism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Guskey, T. R. (2007). Using assessments to improve teaching and learning. In D. Reeves (Ed.),

Ahead of the curve: The power of assessment to transform teaching and learning (pp.1530). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree. Ng, C. H., & Renshaw, P. (2008). Reforming learning. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. OConnor, K. (2007). The last frontier: Tackling the grading dilemma. In D. Reeves (Ed.), Ahead of the curve: The power of assessment to transform teaching and learning (pp. 127-146). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree. Reeves, D. (2007). Ahead of the curve: The power of assessment to transform teaching and learning. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.