No Excuses University- Assessments
Assessment is about students!
My Perspective
From my experience as a student in the public school system 9 years ago, my understanding of Lopez's (2013) message "Assessment is not about you as a teacher, it is about your students" (p.97), is teachers are to use assessments to become aware of their student's areas of mastery and areas needing improvement and as well act as a guide for the learner and teacher in the next steps of the learning process. It is not about the grades (who scored the highest, the lowest) or about you looking good as a teacher because your students test well, achieving high scores.
I always believed as a student, parent and a perspective academic counselor/educator that assessments are meant as a guide for teaching and learning, ensuring that the information helps to improve instruction (Newman, 2013), ultimately resulting in the student achieving to his/her highest academic potential.
Defending my Assessment Practices
As an aspiring guidance/academic counselor I definitely plan to use assessments with my students. I believe that certain assessments (like personality, career and learning styles) will provide results that will assist me with the steps in advising my students. Assessments are tools that should be used to help, motivate and guide students in their academic achievements.
Assessments such as formatives (simple surveys and questionnaires) will be used to monitor my students achieving their personal academic goals. Of course there will be constant discussions between my students and I regarding their goals for school, college and career, of which will act as an assessment for my students allowing them the opportunity to "Self evaluate"; providing them another opportunity to be an active partner in their assessments.
My student's time is valuable, and I would prefer to assess them with material that is of value, producing results that are beneficial to my students reaching their highest potential of academic excellence; rather than assessing them with material that lacks value and beneficial results.
Students are our Straws!
Assessment Comedy
References
Lopez, D. (2013). No excuses university: How six exceptional systems are revolutionizing our schools (2nd ed.).Turnaround Schools Publications.
Newman, R. (2013). Teaching and learning in the 21st century: Connecting the dots. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
McCann, Andrew. (2012, January 13). A Brief History of Assessment. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lBhMSaFNhY