Key Principles of Effective Assessment

The organization What Kids Can Do has outlined four principles that characterize the principles of effective assessment.  These four principles that state assessment: is for students, is faithful to the work that students actually do, is public, and promotes ongoing self-reflection and critical inquiry.  I can use these four principles to evaluate the assessments that I have designed to measure student mastery of the standards that are the focus of the project.

Principle 1:  Assessment is for students.

 It is important that all assessments are relevant to students, build confidence and allow them to share what they know, and give them ownership over the work they do.  Each of the assessments, both formative and summative allow students the opportunity, at some level, to perform tasks in a way they choose.  The personal learning logs give the students' thought processes a voice and a role in the project that others are made aware of.  The other four formative assessments (playground surface area calculation, student interview form, information collection sheets, and final project planning guide) give students the independence that will build confidence in their knowledge of the content and give them ownership of the material.  Through the knowledge they gain with the formative assessments, they will be able to present to an audience and share what they learned.

Principle 2: Assessment is faithful to the work that students can actually do.

The formative assessments of my project are the most reflective of this principle.  The personal learning logs the students will complete throughout the project are key in students thinking about what they are working on and reflecting on the things that they are creating and discovering in the project.  All of the recording sheets help the students to collect specific information that is needed to decide what material should be considered for the playground, while still giving them room for choice.  In regard to the notion that the students should be assessed on what they know, not what they don't, the formative assessments are prescriptive enough to guide the students to perform the tasks, but are not so limiting that there is only one answer.  There are multiple possibilities for how the assessments could turn out.

Principle 3: Assessment is public.

The summative assessment of this project is the most public aspect of the entire project.  The student expectations are outlined in the project planning guide (formative assessment), and shape their presentations.  The presentations themselves will be presented to a live audience of school administrators.  This gives the students an authentic audience to which they can present on a topic that is relevant to them.

Principle 4: Assessment promotes ongoing self-reflection and critical inquiry.

The process that the students will follow to advocate change of the playground surface material is similar to the process that anyone trying to change an aspect of their environment would have to follow.  The students will reflect on their learning most directly through their personal learning logs, but by creating their own student interview questions and conducting interviews, the students will have to utilize their inquiry skills to identify the problems with the current playground environment.  The students will use the other formative assessments to collect information that they will have to reflect upon and format into the presentation for school administrators.  It is through reflection upon their research that they will have to come to a conclusion about the type of material to suggest in their final presentations.

One thing I do not feel that I have done at this point in my project planning, is allow the students to play a role in the development of assessments.  In thinking of ways that they could provide input, I have come up with a couple of options.  The first option would be for the students to decide at the beginning of the project what the components of the summative assessment should be.  I have outlined 8 requirements for the presentations, but perhaps the students would have additional suggestions.  The students could also brainstorm the types of information they should collect and generate their own list of research topics.  Since student input is vital to effective assessment, I feel it is important that I develop more opportunities for students to participate in the creation of assessments as well.