January 10, 2008
How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning
By: Thomas R. Guskey
Teachers who develop useful assessments, provide corrective instruction, and give students second chances to demonstrate success can improve their instruction and help students learn. Excerpted from Educational Leadership. 2003. 60(5), 6-11
The assessments best suited to guide improvements in student learning are the quizzes, tests, writing assignments, and other assessments that teachers administer on a regular basis in their classrooms. Teachers trust the results from these assessments because of their direct relation to classroom instructional goals. Plus, results are immediate and easy to analyze at the individual student level. To use classroom assessments to make improvements, however, teachers must change both their view of assessments and their interpretation of results. Specifically, they need to see their assessments as an integral part of the instruction process and as crucial for helping students learn.
Despite the importance of assessments education today, few teachers receive much formal training in assessment design or analysis. A recent survey showed, for example, that fewer than half the states require competence in assessment of licensure as a teacher (Stiggins, 1999). Lacking specific training, teachers rely heavily on the assessments offered by the publisher of their textbooks of instructional materials. When no suitable assessments are available, teachers construct their own in a haphazard fashion, with questions and essay prompts similar to the ones that their teachers used. They treat assessments as evaluation devices to administer when instructional activities are completed and to use primarily for assigning students’ grades.
To use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments in three important ways:
- Make Assessments Useful for Students
- Follow Assessments With Corrective Instruction
- Give Second Chances to Demonstrate Success
To read the entire text, go to In the Classroom, Articles.
3 Responses to “How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning”
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tpage Says:
December 2, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I know that implementing PLC’s is a process over time. As a novice with PLC’s where do you start with the common assessments/interventions and the discussions that follow? What should the expectations with implementing PLC’s be the first year?
lrice Says:
December 4, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I agree that teachers lack the formal training to create useful assessments. I have a question regarding assessments in smaller learning community schools such as early colleges. At my school, we have very limited staff (14) and I am not sure how we are able to ensure common assessments and other key components of sustainable professional learning communities are in place when there is only one teacher per content area? We are able to have vertical planning and dialog, but lack horizontal planning. Also, how can my teachers have more of an open dialog with colleagues as it relates to formative and summative assessment when they may not teach the same students or the same subject areas? Help!
Tomas Guskey Says:
January 14, 2009 at 9:26 am
These comments are similar to many that I hear from desperate educators who are doing their best to provide excellent educational opportunities for their students. Although dedicated in their efforts, they are constantly led astray by consultants and writers who have wonderful intentions but lack a clear understanding of classroom realities and what is of greatest priority in the process of improving teaching and learning.
In this case, for example, why focus on common formative assessments? To me, that is like suggesting that the key to losing weight is to have a common scale! Will having everyone measured on the same scale help anyone lose weight? I don’t think so! And that is true no matter how accurate or reliable the scale. The quality of the scale matters, of course. But what matters more is what you do with the information you gather from the scale. The same is true with formative assessments.
I recommend taking a look at an article that I wrote for Educational Leadership entitled “The Rest of the Story” (Guskey, T. R. (2008). The rest of the story. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 28-35.). In this article I emphasize that regardless of the quality of any formative assessment, the true value in terms of improving student learning comes from what teachers or instructors do with the results. And in determining how to use the results to help students improve, the best ideas come from other teachers, even if they do not teach the same course or subject area. So, even small schools with few faculty and limited resources can do this well and be very successful, so long as they provide structured opportunities for teacher collaboration.
I hope this is helpful.
Best wishes,
Tom Guskey