Text: Establishing High Quality Assessments

The primary purpose of assessments, are to determine if education goals are being met.

Assessments are a very important aspect of education, because their results can be used to

improve students’ learning and teachers’ teaching methods. This is why, it is crucial to establish

high-quality assessments that are valid, reliable and fair.

The” validity” of an assessment is based on its capability to accurately measure, if

students’ are reaching their learning goals. To get accurate results, it is necessary to “link”

instruction and assessment, to provide a “reasonable sample” of the material being taught. A

proper way of doing this would be to include a variety of methods of assessment; such as,

multiple-choice questions, open ended questions, and projects. When an assessment accurately

reflects the content being taught, as well as, the students’ opportunity to learn, it leads to the

concept of “instructional validity”. To achieve instructional validity, a teacher has to

competently instruct students in addition to giving them sufficient time to practice the skill. “An

important strategy for validity in the classroom” is to always make connections between

learning goals, content, and assessments (pg. 537).

“Reliability” is another aspect of a high-quality assessment. However, reliability and

validity don’t always concur. Reliable scores are consistent but that consistency, may depend

on a variety of factors and circumstances that may change from one test to another. For

example, a student can be knowledgeable on the subject, but his or her performance be

negatively influenced by other internal or external factors. Internal factors may include,

motivation and anxiety. External factors refer to factors such as, poor instruction and poor

sampling of information. Therefore, it is possible for a student’s performance to be consistent

but not valid. Because “typically” there is “no statistical measure of reliability”, teachers have to

rely on their own observations to determine if an error has occurred (pgs. 537-38).

High-quality assessments are also characterized by fairness. Assessments are fair, when

teachers develop appropriate learning goals and provide competent content instruction to

match those goals. Content qualifies as competent when it is free of gender, ethnic, cultural,

socioeconomic status, religion, and disability bias. Ensuring that content is not bias, will give

students equal opportunity to learn and demonstrate their knowledge. For instance, a test that

uses gender biased examples in a problem, portraying men as more prominent than women

may be offensive to female students and cause them unnecessary stress that may affect their

performance. An assessment is also biased, when its context maybe unfamiliar or unrelatable

to some students, because it pertains to a specific ethnic or socioeconomic group. For example,

a test that uses scenarios such as going to the opera, or to solve a problem presented by a

blizzard, will not be relatable to all students. Students of a low-socioeconomic status and

students who are immigrants from a Caribbean country will find themselves in unfamiliar

territory. This is why, “some assessment experts” advocate the importance of creating a

“philosophy of pluralistic assessment”. By creating this philosophy, assessments will become

inclusive and responsive to cultural diversity in the classroom and school. One of these experts

is Geneva Gay. She evaluated the role that culture and ethnicity plays in assessments and

recommends that certain strategies need to be implemented. First, the Eurocentric nature of

instruction and assessment needs to be modified to accommodate methods that include

cultural styles of students of color. Then, students need to be evaluated against their own

records, and assessed “in ways that serve culturally appropriate diagnostic and developmental
functions.” The application of these strategies will ensure that no ethnic group has an

advantage, and it will discontinue educational inequality. Assessment methods have to include

socioemotional measures as well as academic. “Narrative reports, developmental profiles,

student-teacher-parent conferences, and anecdotal records should always be included in

reporting students’ progress (pgs. 538-39).

Like previously discussed, it is crucial to assess students in a variety of ways, to get a

more accurate measure of their capabilities. In the past, preferred methods of assessment were

usually, not open to interpretation when it came to scoring, like multiple choice testing.

Although, multiple-choice has made a comeback, specifically when it comes to preparing

students for standardized tests, and to meet the demands of “No Child Left Behind”, current

trends require students to create to demonstrate their knowledge. Performance assessments,

are able to evaluate a student’s higher-level cognitive skills, such as problem solving, critical

thinking, decision making, drawing of inferences, and strategic thinking (pgs. 539-40).

Having high performance standards, and even world-class standards is another trend in

a contemporary classroom that is used to set goals or targets to attain. A huge part of

technology’s influence on education, has been how it has revolutionized assessment. Tests are

increasingly, being administered with computer programs both off-line an online. There are

many benefits to using web-based assessments. Some of these benefits include, greater

accuracy, cost reduction, the ability to evaluate behavior, students’ progress, etc. In addition,

the most reputable programs, allow teachers to adapt or even develop their own tests, as well

as being in compliance with state and national standards or “No Child Left Behind” (pg.540).
 Finally, trends in assessment now promote “integrated rather than isolated skills”.

Students are involved in all aspects of assessment by guiding students with feedback and

making criteria public rather than private (pg. 540).

Video: Discuss How China is Using A.I.

China has big plans to become a global leader in artificial intelligence. They have applied

technology in every aspect of society, from how people make purchases, to how police

monitors the city. Without a doubt, some of their biggest efforts toward achieving their goal,

have been geared toward education. The government has poured billions of dollars into the

project. Bringing together tech-giants, start-ups, and schools. Examples of the technology that

has been implemented in Chinese classrooms include, robots that analyze students’ health and

engagement levels, uniforms with chips in them that track their locations, surveillance cameras

that monitor students’ cell phone use and even how often they yawn during class. But the most

controversial, are the headbands that measure each individual student’s level of concentration;

a program that is supposed to improve students’ grades, while also feeding powerful

algorithms. Although these measures have alarmed Chinese “netizens”, (frequent internet

users), schools say that it wasn’t hard to get parent consent to enroll kids into what is one of

the world’s largest experiments in A.I. education. A parent interviewed said, if it is for our

country’s research and development, then I don’t think it’s a problem”.

Fifth-grade student participants, start their day by putting on their headbands and then

practice meditation. The device has three electrodes, two behind the ears and one on the

forehead. These sensors pick up electrical signals sent by neurons in the brain. Then the neural
data is sent to teacher’s computer, so while students are working, the teacher can find out who

is focused and who is not. The device also have lights that signal level of concentration. The red

light means the student is focused, the blue means the student is distracted, and the white light

signals that the student is offline. A report is then generated that shows how well the class was

paying attention and it even details the level of concentration of each student at ten-minute

intervals. The report is then forwarded to a chat group, were parents are able to see it.

The reports are detailed, but it is still questionable what they exactly measure and if

they actually really work. Neuroscientist Theodore Zanto from the University of California, was

surprised to learn that this technology called Electroencephalography (EEG), is being used in the

classroom on children, because it is an instrument that is generally used in labs and hospitals by

doctors. Zanto stated, that EEG is very susceptible to artifacts and so, any disturbance such as

being itchy or if the EEG wasn’t set up properly, can affect the signal. He affirmed that, EEG is a

new technology, with little research behind it.

Despite the chances for false readings, teachers were pleased with the outcome of using

EEG in the classroom. Teachers have noted, significant improvements in student discipline,

attention, and scores. A student interviewed, said that he has become more attentive in class

and his grades and assignments have nearly perfect scores. Other students are not as

enthusiastic about wearing the headband. They complained about physical discomfort, and felt

like the device was controlling them. One child admitted, that his parents punish him for his low

attention scores. Another, described a scenario where all students perform well except for him.

This kind of comparison, adds a new kind of pressure for students.

 Companies that were interviewed, said that the data collected goes to government

funded research projects. Parents in the other hand, were not clear as to where the data ended

up---but were not at all concerned about it. Zanto believes, that most likely there is no privacy

protection at all. Experts and citizens alike, are concerned about various aspects of the

country’s push into artificial intelligence. These classrooms are laboratories for future

generations, and while these tools may potentially help some two hundred million students

raise their grades, the final outcome won’t be able to be determined until these children

become adults.