I believe that assessment is an ongoing process, by which, mainstream classroom teachers, special educators, and school psychologists can gather information that will help them to make better decisions about individual students or student populations. Formal and informal assessments are used by educators in order to evaluate student progress and or behavior for placement and eligibility purposes as well as to help plan lessons. Special educators may use assessments to determine the eligibility of students for special education services or to help make decisions to adapt students’ Individualized Education Plans according to the needs identified in the assessment process.
Many assessments have a direct relationship to content standards, which make them an extremely useful tool for educators. For example, a teacher of ELL students can use the results of the W-APT assessment to gage each student’s proficiency in each of the five English Language Proficiency Content Standards. Using the results, the teacher can tailor her lessons to be sure the needs of each individual student will be met. A pull-out teacher, or ESL resource room teacher, knowing the degree of proficiency of each student in five areas will be able to use his/her time with each student to work with them toward proficiency in each area. Assessments like the W-APT directly relate to teachers and help them to better serve their students.
In special education, assessment is an invaluable tool to help serve students with special needs more appropriately. Achievement tests like the Woodcock Johnson can be used to help educators place children into classes in which the learning will take place at a pace that is right for them. If a child has a very low IQ, that child may be placed in a self- contained classroom, in which his or her peers learn at the same, or a similar, rate.
Many types of assessments are used by teachers, and/or school systems, to gather information that can be used to make decisions about each student’s education. Pre-assessment is a useful tool to determine what students know before beginning a lesson, topic or subject. This will help instructors recognize the best way to scaffold or present new information.
Formal assessments are data driven assessments that are based on statistics. These assessments include norm-referenced tests and criterion referenced tests. Formal assessments can be given to students to test their performance against other children in their age group and grade level. They may also be given to identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses in comparison to his peers.
Informal assessments include a teacher’s records of her students’ performance, observations, check lists, and rating scales. These records are ongoing and can direct teacher instruction. Some informal assessments may be in the form of regular classroom activities such as class work, journals, essays, play-based assessment or student participation.
Formative assessments are ongoing assessments such as classroom observations. These are used by teachers to improve instructional strategies in the classroom. This type of assessment may also include periodic quizzes and performance tasks. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are used to evaluate the effectiveness of different academic programs. They can be used to determine whether or not students have mastered specific skills or grasped certain concepts.
I believe that the most important assessments for individual classroom teachers include pre-assessments, which help teachers decide what prior knowledge students have already grasped, what they have questions about relating to the future topic of instruction, and what the general gaps in knowledge are among the students. The results of pre-assessments help teachers to cater their lessons to their specific classes.
While assessment is a necessary tool for education, I think that the cultural bias that can be found in many assessments can do a disservice to certain members of the school-age population. I believe that the results may be skewed, depending upon the stage of the acculturation process a student is in. If the student is in the second stage of acculturation, for example, the student may be angry and not want to take the assessment in general. Also, if a CLD student knows that placement will be determined based on his or her results, he or she may feel very apprehensive about the assessment. A student’s level of excitement, or apathy toward school and assessments can most likely impact the results significantly. I think that a teacher’s knowledge of a student, and her ongoing informal assessments of that student are very valuable in the realm of culturally diverse students.
I definitely believe that intelligence cannot be tested independently of the culture that gives rise to an assessment. I believe that all assessments are geared toward a certain group of people or culture and there is a bias to them. The simplest things can throw a child off and make it hard for them to understand a question on an assessment. For example, if a student were to try to answer a question talking about “hop scotch” and did not grow up in the United States, he or she may not even understand that “hop scotch” is a game commonly played by children. Cultural differences as small as the games children play growing up can have a huge impact on the degree to which they can understand certain questions, stories or situations.
Cultural differences or not, however, I do think assessments should be used for ELL learners upon entering a school to assess how proficient the student is in English and what, if any, supports should be put in place to help that child. Observing an English language learner in the classroom would not be enough to adequately assess that child’s performance or level of English proficiency. This will also help educators to understand whether or not any difficulties in school should be seen as having to do with their lack of proficiency in English or if there may be a greater problem that would require testing for special education eligibility.
The difficulty in assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students has been noted by Jim Cummins in his work on second language instruction. Cummins noted that there are two different types of second language acquisition, basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) (Herrera, 2011, p. 53). BICS are surface language skills, such as listening and speaking, which are rapidly acquired. Many children develop the fluency of a native speaker within two years of being immersed in English (p.53). CALP, on the other hand, is much harder to achieve, taking between five and seven years to master. CALP is essential to fully succeed in school.
I agree with Cummins. When learning a language, it is much easier to form superficial fluency in the language than it is to speak, read and write about subject area content. Cummins’s work in this area teaches teachers to take a closer look when assessing ELL students. Mere observations may be misleading. Teachers must use formal assessments to measure English language learners’ academic language proficiency.
In mainstream classes, general education teachers may use assessments to implement differentiated instruction in their classrooms. Knowing each child’s strengths and weaknesses enable teachers to target lessons and activities toward students’ needs. If a teacher discovers through assessment that one student in her classroom is a predominantly visual learner she may use more visuals in the classroom rather than making the students strictly take notes. If the same teacher discovers that another student is a strong tactile learner, she may implement more hands on activities.
Howard Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences argues that students learn in their own ways (Howard Gardner, n.d.). He believes that students learn best when they are in classes with teachers who utilize different methods of teaching and provide students with various opportunities to show what they have learned. I feel that there is a direct relationship between Gardner’s theory and differentiated instruction.
While I see the need and reasoning for formal assessment, I believe that a teacher’s ability to perform ongoing informal assessments of her students is an invaluable tool. I believe that assessment is a necessary tool for placement purposes, whether for special education or for an ELL student, however, I think that informal assessments, such as observations by teachers in the classroom, may shed more light on certain behaviors.
Reference
Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences and education . (n.d.). contents @ the informal education homepage. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm
Herrera, S. G. (2011). Mastering ESL and bilingual methods: differentiated instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
The language learning theories of Professor J. Cummins. (n.d.). A guide to learning English. Retrieved March 17, 2012, from http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/cummin.htm
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