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Educational assessment 1Wh
y educational assessment is limited in today’s programs
 In recent years, educational assessment has received a lot of attention fromadministrators, teachers, students, and parents in how schools remain accountable for studentachievement. Since George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) onJanuary 8, 2002, standardized testing has become the focus of much debate. Even before NCLB,high-stakes testing (HST) has been highly criticized for its shortcomings in measuring studentachievement while having such an impact on the decision-making processes that schools face(i.e., funding, teacher promotions, etc.). With so much focus on standardized testing, it is of littlesurprise that degree programs often neglect educational assessment as a complement toeducational testing. That is, instead of using HST as a single measurement tool for making keyeducational decisions, schools incorporate a mixture of assessment tools (i.e., formative,summative, and diagnostic assessments) in determining the best option to take in the future inpursuit of improving student achievement.Before addressing various language programs, some definitions related to testing andassessment might be helpful. In the classroom, assessment can be divided between summativeand formative assessment. Fisher and Frey (2007) define formative assessment as a way of improving instruction and providing student feedback whereby students self-monitor their ownunderstandings of concepts throughout a unit in order for teachers to check their level of understanding. In contrast, they define summative assessment as a measure of studentcompetency whereby students gauge their own progress toward course or grade-level goals andbenchmarks at the end of a unit or course in order for teachers to grade, promote, and rank students. Put differently, HST and standardized tests implemented per NCLB
 – 
by themselves
 – 
 
 
Educational assessment 2are summative assessments that rank students and have little-to-nothing to do with the validity of instruction or the level of student understanding.Language learning programs today often disregard the importance of educationalassessment when preparing pre-service and in-service language educators. Considering fivedifferent universities in the United States, one can see that educational assessment is typicallylimited to one method course at the undergraduate level and one assessment course at thegraduate level (see table 1).
Cal State LA University of UtahCarroll College Goshen College AnaheimUniversityDegree MA TESOL BA TESOL BA TESOL BA TESOL MA TESOLCourses LanguageTesting CourseMethodologyCourseMethodologyCourseMethodologyCourseLanguageTestingCourse
Albeit scarce, these assessment courses do focus on formative assessment as a means forimproved student achievement. However, the question becomes whether these programs areallowing enough time for pre-service and in-service language educators to learn not onlyalternative assessments but why they are assessing in the first place.Teachers assess students for a variety of reasons. Popham (2008) distinguishes between
“yesteryear’s” answers to “today’s”
answers as follows:
 
“Yesteryear’
s answers as to why teachers assess students
o
 
Diagnosing students’ strengths and weaknesses
 
o
 
Monitoring students’ progress
 
o
 
Assigning grades
o
 
Determining one’s own instructional effectiveness
 Table 1
Note. Information was taken from each respective university website, 2009.
 
Educational assessment 3
 
Today’s answers
as to why teachers assess students
o
 
Influencing public perceptions of educational effectiveness
o
 
Helping evaluate teachers
o
 
Clarifying teachers’ instructional intentions” (pp. 8
-15)
Certainly adding today’s reasons for assessing to those from the past has reflected a level of 
accountability that did not exist before. Thus, formative and summative assessment suppliesinformation to external stakeholders (i.e., parents, community, etc.), administrators, and teachersand students in order to make more informed decisions that best result in improving studentachievement. Since TESOL (i.e., teaching English to students of other languages) programs arenot allowing for much time in their curriculum dedicated to assessment, many of the reasonsteachers assess students are being overlooked. For example, professional development andbuilding common assessments are directly related to classroom assessment being implementedthroughout the school. Instead of each teacher assessing and instructing in isolation, assessmentresults are shared throughout the faculty as a form of community of practice.Another reason why language programs limit their exposure to assessment is likely due toa more traditional rationale of testing. That is, assessment is planned
after 
instruction as opposedto
before
it. Instead of assessment and instruction being two separate processes, formativeassessment merges the two in a more dynamic and personalized way. Assessment is plannedbefore instruction so that expected performance goals are established allowing learners to have adirection as information and feedback are negotiated between the language learner and educator.The impact that ongoing assessment has on instruction is usually not part of graduate assessmentor undergraduate method courses in a significant way.
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