Assessing Assessment

Ever since I was little the word "test" or "exam" would send the chills through my body. I never felt they were testing to see how much I had learned but instead how much I did not know or had studied. I always wanted to succeed and many times I did, but other times I would not do so well. I think the problem was the way I was being tested and I think that is still the way many teachers still test today: at the end of the learning process when there is nothing else to be done about it except fail. We need to think the way assessment is done and ask ourselves what we are testing, how we are doing it and what the students are getting out of it. The Department of Education has a great page called: Measuring for Learning which is all about assessment and it discusses how it has improved over the years and best yet, where it is going. It begins talking about how measurement is part of every teacher's job because we need to constantly ...