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Assessment: Evidence Based Instruction

The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in
their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s
decision making.
Assessment is an incredibly useful tool for an educator, but also a double-edged sword.

Without monitoring students, a teacher cannot accurately know where the students are at with

their understanding of the content. Because of this, I consider formative assessments (informal

methods of monitoring student levels) to be indispensable. However, in my view, there are three

issues around testing: when educators “teach to a test,” when students sole evaluation is based

off assessment scores, and when teachers do not use formative assessments to continually

monitor their own instruction. Let’s go through these faults in greater detail. Part of my view is

shared by Phelan and Phelan, who in speaking of assessment scores, go so far as to say that

testing “crushes creativity, narrows the curriculum, doesn’t focus on what students actually

learned, and leads to unfair evaluation of students, with results that do not predict useful things”

(Phelan and Phelan, 2013, as cited in Al Ghafri et al., 2019). This view clearly highlights the

limitations of allowing testing to overtake common sense in education. Teaching to a test is a

phenomenon where a teacher is incentivized to teach material so that students are successful on a

particular test (such as a statewide standardized test), which according to Salman Khan may lead

to passing scores but not mastery of the content (Khan, 2016, as cited in Ballin et al., 2022).

Statewide standardized testing introduces an assortment of problems in education. While it can

be helpful to monitor the student body and progress of various schools, statewide testing

introduces perverse incentives in education. In worst case instances, schools whose testing scores

fail to improve are closed; in a best-case scenario, students' knowledge is tested by questions that

are limited in form and complexity (Posner, 2004). It is not my opinion that covering material

simply to improve test scores is effective or worthwhile. Lastly, if a teacher is not using
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continual formative assessment, they cannot accurately know what their students are

understanding and what they still need to work on. By structuring knowledge checkpoints

throughout a lesson, a teacher can see where their class is at, and either adjust instruction or

move to the next topic saving instructional time.

With some of the negative aspects of assessments out of the way, I will discuss two ways

I have used testing in my time as an educator. The first is through frequent use of formative

assessments which, as I have stated, are a variety of means an educator can employ to informally

judge where a particular student or their class is knowledge wise. In my current role as a physical

education teacher, I employ formative assessments in most every class. Formative assessments

are a “planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to

elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended

disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners” (Jimenez

and Warren, 2023, p. 48). How this looks for me is that I will give a short instruction on our

activity, then allow student activity time while I walk around the gym and make sure students are

successfully completing the task. This is going to look different each lesson, but students use my

input to adjust their performance, and it allows me to see who is progressing in that skill or not.

There is no “soccer test,” for instance, but while walking around the gym I can judge whether a

class needs more time with a select activity. This is something that I do on an individual basis, as

well as on a class wide basis. I may have pointers to specific students based on their performance

and adjust lessons or units if my class struggles with a task.

The second assessment example I will speak about occurred during my student teaching.

During this time, I designed a unit on the 50 states for students and created an assessment plan so

I could monitor their progress. In the plan, I had two learning objectives that aligned with the
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state standards, and I created a rubric to use to assess how well the students met this standard. To

test them, I designed a pre-test & post-test to monitor learning, and importantly included

formative assessments during the lessons so that I would be able to monitor student growth in

real time. The testing was tied into the unit so that from the student’s perspective there was no

test, it was simply a lesson with a task attached to it. This is ideal, as “(a)ssessment is most

effective when it is ongoing rather than episodic” (Bailey et al., 2002, p. 426). Additionally, the

data I got on student growth was encouraging; while there were many absences during the unit,

all the students who were able to take both the pre and post assessment saw growth in the first

learning goal of using maps to locate U.S. states, with positive learning gains scores ranging

from 4% to 100%. Many students also saw growth on the second learning goal of writing

informationally about a state, with the class seeing an 18% positive learning gains score. Had I

not been monitoring students with a pre and post assessment I would have been unaware of if my

lesson had taught the students much of anything; it is not so much that testing allow for effective

instruction in this instance, however, if my lessons had not imparted the needed knowledge this

testing regime would have let me know and adjust accordingly. As can be seen here, a well-

thought out, frequent testing philosophy is imperative for effective instruction and knowledge of

whether there has been positive student growth.

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References

Al Ghafri, M., Audeh, Y., & Al-Gadallah, M. (2019). Teaching to test or communicate. Arab

World English Journal, 10(2), 225–241. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/10.24093/awej/vol10no2.18

Bailey, M., Floersheim, R., & Ressler, S. (2002). Course assessment plan: A tool for integrated

curriculum management. Journal of Engineering Education, 91(4), 425–434. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2002.tb00728.x

Ballin, A., Davidson, E., Caron, J., & Drago, M. (2022). Making math add up for students

receiving special education. International Journal of Whole Schooling, 18(1), 1–28.

https://eds-p-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=e90503b1-ee38-454c-

9685-c52748ab005d%40redis

Jimenez, B. A., & Warren, S. H. (2023). Building self-determination via student engaged

formative assessments for students with extensive support needs. Education & Training

in Autism & Developmental Disabilities, 58(1), 48–61. https://eds-p-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=710c5bf9-7666-4120-

b01d-91b45c8c102e%40redis

Posner, D. (2004). What’s wrong with teaching to the test? The Phi Delta Kappan, 85(10), 749–

751. https://eds-p-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.uas.alaska.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=4fd21742-01c6-4428-

9b65-a3e888977a39%40redis