Assessment - Patricia, Kelly, Emily, & Asheley

Kelly and Patricia both have had experience with different forms of assessment in school. Patricia has taught in different schools in different districts while Kelly just completed her first year of teaching. On the other hand, I have had no real experiences with assessments. Therefore reading their blogs helped me to bring my thoughts on assessment into a new perspective.

To begin, Kelly and I both found it interesting that the word assessment came from a Latin word that meant sitting beside and observing someone. With today's focus on testing as the primary form of assessment, we wondered why the oldest meaning of the word assessment was now ignored. I also agree with Kelly when she said, "I truly agree with the text that without evaluating assessment & applying it to future instruction, assessment is pointless".
All of us agreed that portfolios have many merits. Patricia has her 4th grade students keep a portfolio so she can share the work with her students and their parents. She also conferences with her students throughout the year to review their strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, her district does not require portfolios and no one else really uses them as an assessment tool in her school.
Continuing, self-assessment is viewed as a vital tool becuase it helps students take responsibility of their learning and it helps them to understand and reflect upon their work. Patricia notes that for self-assessment to be truly effective an action plan is needed.
In addition, we thought that the "Me Box" was a good way to build community in the classroom and help students connect to each other. Patricia plans to assign this for her class in September. I had some concerns with the "me box". The biggest challenge would be to know if all of your students had things to bring from home or even a box to put them in. I would not want some of my students to come to class with boxes full of wonderful trinkets while others do not even have a spare box let alone things to fill it with.
Finally we come to the heated topic of standarized testing. I think that we all agree that testing needs to be in supplement to other forms of assessment and that assessment needs to guide instruction. Patricia put a valid quote from the text on her blog: "The true measure of wether or not standards are any good is wether or not kids are learning more" (pg. 585). In addition, Kelly's experiences concure with the text. She was locked into teaching "GEPA prep" strategies and then at the end of the yeard she was not even able to see the test scores. This left her wondering if her instruction was even benefical to her students.
With regard to standards, I felt that Patricia made a great point when she said, "In New Jersey, each district is so different; we don't have standards on how to use the standards from one place to another". She worked in a school where the standards had to be highlighted in a lesson and now works in a school where they are hardly mentioned.
In a country so focused on standards and testing, we agree with Routman when she says in the summary, "Fostering a love of learning and desire to continue learning must not be hampered by testing" (pg. 599).