Errors of Assessment and Evaluation

The first thought that popped into my mind after reading this final chapter of Williams was “Thank goodness I decided the first weekend of freshmen year not to pursue education.” Everything we’ve read and discussed this semester has left me with the impression that teaching is a much more challenging profession than I ever could have imagined. The topic of assessments and evaluations, I think, confirms this. At the start of the reading, Williams brings up the issue of teacher “accountability,” which is something that I had not really contemplated previously (301). School districts place a great deal of pressure on their educators to make sure that students can pass federally mandated standardized tests. The consequence, as I’ve seen with my two younger brothers in a public high school, is that students and teachers become overwhelmed by these assessments and the emphasis on rich academic experiences gets misplaced; keeping scores up and maintaining federal funding are the bottom line.

Like some people have already commented, I, too, feel that standardized tests (like the SAT) are not the best measurement of one’s academic abilities. I always did well in school, but I felt that my successes in class weren’t reflected in the scores I received from such tests. In addition, they hardly ever had a beneficial effect on my psyche as a student. So I find it hard to understand why the U.S. educational system persists on distributing them when they clearly aren’t doing much to improve students’ educational experience (especially when compared to other nations who do not waste the time/money on similar assessments, yet still exceed the achievement levels of American students).

The other major focus of the chapter, on holistic grading, did not sit well with me either. The whole idea of letting students grade one another’s work based on their practice with sample works and the construction of rubrics seems unfeasible. I do not personally have much experience with this method of grading, but from what I’ve seen over my years in school, most students just don’t care about a classmate’s work. And when they are forced to assign a grade to someone else’s paper, they are likely to inflate it. Part of a teacher’s job is to assess and evaluate his/her students’ work; I don’t feel this responsibility should be passed on to students. Out of all the options for grading mentioned, I liked the idea of portfolios best. Having two/three teachers come together to collaborate their courses would be a great way to reduce paper loads, combine and increase the caliber of experience with grading, and give students more control over their grades (as long as teachers follow the standards of their portfolio assessment training). Still, it’s fairly obvious that no foolproof method of how to conduct evaluations and assessments exists. Subjectivity will always prevent any absolute, “fair,” and straightforward assessment of writing.