RE: Questions for today's discussion

Assessment is key for any teacher to plan the curriculum for students and for the public help schools be accountable.  Every teacher should perform ongoing assessment of students mostly to plan for instruction (as assessed in the Reading Instructional Competence Assessment - RICA):

1. Tests should be used to help the teacher learn about what the students don't know and need to learn.  The state assessment can't do that because it is not flexible to meet the needs of students who have different needs, the test is taken in April but  results are given out after the child has already left the class, it's not authentic (many children are alienated from the test because they see no purpose in it and just fill in blanks at random), it doesn't assess the process the child went through to get the answer (which would be helpful in instruction, doesn't take place in different different contexts (some students do better individually and others as a group or with different material or with less pressure) and doesn't include self assessments which students need to do to buy into the improvement.

2, Teachers should use Formal Assessments (e.g. Teacher administered Reading Inventories) and informal assessments through observation and teacher notes.  In this way teachers can learn what the problems individual students have and teach to meet their needs.  Currently state assessment which is a very crude instrument determines what teachers teach, not because it is efficient, but because it has authority. Assessment is best when it is paired with instruction.  You assess and right away or the next hour or the next day you teach what the student needs.  Blindly following state mandated textbooks or state standards for a particular grade level won't allow a teacher to do that.

3. Teachers need to use a variety of appropriate assessment tools (current state assessment tests special education students, bilingual students,students with problems in phonics, students who have problems with comprehension and English language learners with the same state test.  Tests should be specific to meet the need of individuals so the teacher can plan to use them.)


To replace the current system of assessment, teachers should be required to keep a range of formal (in reading a leveling test such as the Reading Inventory) and informal assessments showing how they met the students' individual needs.