Assessment literacy

Most of us recognize that more of our students need to be doing deeper, more complex thinking work more often. But if we want students to be critical thinkers and problem solvers and effective communicators and collaborators, that cognitively-complex work is usually more divergent rather than convergent. It is more amorphous and fuzzy and personal. It is often multi-stage and multimodal. It is not easily reduced to a number or rating or score. However, this does NOT mean that kind of work is incapable of being assessed. When a student creates something – digital or physical (or both) – we have ways of determining the quality and contribution of that product or project. When a student gives a presentation that compels others to laugh, cry, and/or take action, we have ways of identifying what made that an excellent talk. When a student makes and exhibits a work of art – or sings, plays, or composes a musical selection – or displays athletic skill – or writes a computer program – we have ways of telling whether it was done well. When a student engages in a service learning project that benefits the community, we have ways of knowing whether that work is meaningful and worthwhile. When a student presents a portfolio of work over time, we have ways of judging that. And so on…

If we continue to insist on judging performance assessments with the ‘validity’ and ‘reliability’ criteria traditionally used by statisticians and psychometricians, we never – NEVER – will move much beyond factual recall and procedural regurgitation to achieve the kinds of higher-level student work that we need more of.

“What score should we give the Mona Lisa? And what would the ‘objective’ rating criteria be?”