Supporting Classroom Assessment Practice: Lessons From a Small High School

I came across an article that I usually would overlook based on the focus and the population it relates to however it looked at assessment and the difficulty in getting instructor buy-in so I thought I would look it over. The article ‘Supporting Classroom Assessment Practice: Lessons From a Small High School” by David Allen, Suzanna Wichterle Ort, and Joseph Schmidt looked at the importance of using formative and summative assessment in the classroom and linked these concepts to course goals.

The authors of the paper took on a research project in which they worked with a Harlem Social Studies teacher who was reluctant to conduct assessment in the classroom giving traditional reasons of resistance including the time factor and the amount of work he felt he needed to cover. The teacher also indicated that he had tried assessment techniques in the past and had limited results indicating that students could not stay on track long enough to give him solid for amative assessment data.

The researchers worked with the teacher to develop a written assignment in which the students could meet the goals of the course and the instructor would receive feedback on the information presented in the course and the benefit, or lack of benefit, the students found in it.
The researchers reported that goals, criteria, support, process and product, and feedback to teachers and students were all strengthened through the assessment process.