There are many answers and viewpoints to this question. No matter which educator, parent, student, administrator or policy maker you ask, you get a slightly different answer. Most of these answers can be summed up to essentially this..."to see what the students have learned." To an extent, I can agree with this summation. However, is that really what we are doing as teachers? Sometimes.
Other times we are not testing to determine what our students have learned. Sometimes we test our students because the school/district/State requires the assessment. They gather the data from all students that took the test and behind some magical closed door session there comes an algorithm of some sort to rank our students based on the answers they had supplied. (The "They" can be teachers, administrators, standardized assessment companies, school boards, etc. depending upon the test in question.) The rank can come in the form of a letter grade, a number score, a percentile ranking, a placement on a given rubric, a t-score, a z-score, a pass/fail result, or in some cases, no feedback to the test taker at all. These are the cases that are truly where the tail is wagging the dog. It does not make sense and it is far too common that there is little to no benefit for the student.
Many school leaders talk about "doing what is right for our students", "standing behind our students", or "putting students at the forefront", and many other wonderful statements to their stakeholders. I am not against these being said at all. Quite the contrary. I am absolutely behind each of these statements. My concern is that many times the actions of our school leaders do not back up these statements, and testing is certainly one of these actions. Why test students if there is no follow up to the test? Why gather data just to gather data? Why gather data simply to rank our students against one another? What is the point?
Students are assessed on a regular basis in every aspect of their education. Most of these are formative in nature. Meaning, the results and/or feedback they receive (or do not receive) from these assessments informs their learning in some way or another. These formative assessments can be class discussions, quizzes, projects, speeches, skits, games, exit tickets, presentations, or just about any other form you can think of that gives the student an opportunity to show their learning at any given point about any given learning target. As teachers, we take the opportunity to gauge our students' learning against said learning targets and then adjust our teaching accordingly. Then at a later point, hopefully after several other formative assessments and feedback have been taken and given, we give our students a summative assessment. Sadly, this is where many assessment cycles stop...in schools.
However, students are also being formatively assessed by their peers on a regular basis. They are constantly being assessed on how they dress, how they talk, who they sit with at lunch, who their friends are on social media, what they post on social media, what they like or don't like on social media, this list goes on further than we want to admit and in many cases these assessments mean more to the student than anything we do in the classroom. These social assessments guide how each student approaches everything they do in and out of school.
The difference? Immediate application of learning, reflection and feedback. But why does this difference have to exist? Why are we not giving more meaningful (to the student) assessments? Why are we not giving time for students, and teachers, to reflect on learning and feedback to guide future lessons? Why do we as teachers feel we need to be the guardians of the information at all times? Let these things go. Listen to our students. They want our guidance, not our governance. Find ways to spark their curiosity. Find projects that put their learning into action. Assess them in more ways than just paper and pencil. Set the expectations high, give them the support they need, guide them in the right direction, let them use their past experiences and curiosity lead them to learn.
Stop testing students and start assessing learning. We have the power and ability to do this within our classrooms. What is stopping you?
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