Assuming with ASSessment

Many educators fall into the trap of using the same type of assessment for all students. Then, if some students don't perform as well as expected, some are deemed to be slackers or students with lower skills or abilities. But the truth is that teachers have to find the right type of authentic assessment to use for their students. We feel so much pressure from the government (IDEA, NCLB), the city (Race to the Top), our administration (Annual Yearly Progress) to have our students "perform." But what does that mean, when the performance standards aren't appropriate for all of our students?

I learned in my undergraduate education as a Social Studies general ed major at NYU to use "authentic assessment." This is portfolio assessment where students create real work products that make the content more meaningful. In this way, they can put themselves back in time and create artifacts of the time period we studied. I have seen this be successful in NYC schools, where they didn't spend weeks upon weeks upon weeks doing inappropriate "Test Prep" for the standardized tests. And, dare I say, even lacking test prep, the students performed high on the standardized tests! This is because the authentic assessment was easy to differentiate and was able to be individualized for students' needs and abilities. THIS was UDL in the classroom.

I have also seen schools go horribly wrong during my months as a Global History Regents Prep tutor one summer after I graduated from NYU. The school was drilling the Regents into these kids' heads, with little success and so much frustration and pushing back from the students. For months, the students spent every morning for three hours reviewing the Regents and every afternoon for four hours practicing old Regents exams. Is this assessment? When the kids are failing just because they're bored out of their minds? And then they take the "real" test and they fail just because they can't take it anymore? How is that any true indication of what our students are learning?

Assessment is truly a touchy subject because of just that--how do we know what the standard for achievement is without standardization? But on the other hand, how do we place the emphasis on LEARNING, and not on TESTING?