Standard 5-Assessment in a Multi-racial Multicultural Democracy

Maria Sideri
EDU 448 Elementary Education Portfolio Development
Fall 2011
Wheelock College Standard for Educator Preparation Program

Standard 5. Assessment in a Multi-racial Multicultural Democracy

Educators should understand that assessment is an integral part of teaching, and that children’s developmental and academic interests, accomplishments, and challenges should drive their daily instructional decisions. They should know that various types of assessments, including self-assessment, have different uses, advantages, limitations, and biases. They should understand that appropriate assessment must consider the cultural, familial, and community contexts from which children come. Educators should know how to use a variety of formal and informal assessment tools and strategies to monitor and promote each student’s learning and development; use both formative and summative assessments to determine students’ understanding in each subject area; and be aware of technological tools that can facilitate assessment.

5.1 Understand that assessment is an integral part of teaching and that children’s developmental and academic interests, accomplishments and challenges should drive their daily instructional decisions.
5.2 Know the different uses, advantages, limitations and biases of different types of assessments and understand that appropriate assessments must consider cultural, familial and community contexts from which children come.
5.3 Know how to use a variety of formal and informal assessment tools and strategies to monitor and promote each student’s learning and development.
5.4 Use formative and summative assessments to determine students’ understanding in each subject area, and be aware of technological tools that can facilitate assessment.

Assessment is one of the most important aspects of a classroom. It is what allows the teacher to see how each student is progressing throughout the year. Without assessment, children may not get the type of attention or assistance they need in the classroom in order to be the most academically successful they can be. I believe that assessment should be routinely incorporated into the curriculum of a classroom, and that the variety of collective assessments should yield information about a student’s development, academic interests, and learning challenges. As helpful, useful, and necessary I believe assessments to be, there are many different types of formal and informal assessments, some of which run the risk of being biased against children from particular racial, cultural, linguistic, or socio-economic backgrounds.

During my pre-practicum, my view of assessment was changed forever. I was always slightly cautious about standardized testing, and I was confused about the controversy surrounding standardized testing, such as the MCAS. I had heard some teachers talking about formal standardized tests like the MCAS in a negative light. Because standardized testing is going to be a reality in my future teaching career, I was incredibly thankful to experience the way that my supervising practitioner handled preparation for this standardized test. Her philosophy was not to teach to the test, but rather to teach her students the way she wanted to, while incorporating skills they needed to have to successfully master the MCAS. During reading activities, my supervising practitioner would have the students pretend they were detectives and spies and have the children find “evidence” in the readings they were required to read, in order to answer comprehension questions. She made test preparation enjoyable, and I am sure this positively affected the student’s MCAS scores. Also, my supervising practitioner addressed the specific needs of English Language Learners (ELL) in her class during such assessments. She would differentiate her instruction by altering some words in the readings into Japanese, to help the ELL students understand as best as possible. In my future classroom, I plan to adapt this philosophy of teaching by focusing on teaching in order to obtain the learning goal, not teaching for the assessment.

Although I experienced a positive way of how standardized testing or formal assessment can be done, I know from readings that that is not always the case, and sometimes, such standardized tests can be culturally biased. McAfee and Leong (2011) explain that, “Evidence is strong that many tests and testing procedures are unfair to poor children, youngsters from any racial or ethnic background other than the middle-class majority, English-language learners, divergent and creative thinkers, and just about any group one might wish to investigate” (p. 179). This is true because if children cannot understand the directions or problems to questions they will not be able to show their knowledge because of their level of language proficiency. Now that I am aware of these limitations, I will be sure to be aware of this in my future classroom when it comes to formal or standardized assessment which is another aspect of standard five.

I believe I have comprehensively met standard 5 in the sense that I have included children’s interests into the assessments I create on a daily basis. For example, by reading the students’ daily journals, I discovered that almost all of the students in the classroom had an affinity for music. Therefore, I decided to incorporate music into my phonics/syllable lesson by discussing how the beat of music is related to the beat in words, which is what syllables are. The students were very interested in this connection, and therefore I adapted the assessment which was 3 open response questions to include the questions, “What is your favorite type of music?” and “How do syllables relate to music?” I have shown this assessment in artifact 5.1.

Assessments need to consider cultural, familial, and community contexts from which children come. This is incredibly important to understand while creating or using an assessment, because it prevents or limits bias from occurring. During an oral assessment that I conducted in my practicum, the students were learning about different cultures in order to learn why Cambridge Public Schools did not have school on Rosh Hashanah. Therefore, I explained to the students what a culture is, and how culture can include people’s religious and non religious beliefs. In order to see if the students understood what culture was, I had the students turn and talk with their neighbor on the rug to discuss their family’s culture. Then, as an assessment, I had the students share with the class what their partner’s culture, traditions, or beliefs were. In this sense, the students were not only learning about one another’s diversity, but they were also completing an assessment that embraced their multiple identies and did not ask them to fit into a dominant frame. My notes from the oral discussion and notes from listening to the student’s turn and talk discussions are shown in artifact 5.2.

I believe I have met in standard five includes using a variety of formal and informal assessment tools and strategies to monitor and promote each student’s learning and development. In terms of a formal assessment, I have conducted a Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) in September at my practicum. I made sure the reading in the DRA matched the interests of the student who was completing it. This seemed to hold the student’s attention, which provided an accurate result. In terms of informal assessment, I completed many running records of students throughout the classroom to determine which reading level was best for the students. One example of a running record that I completed is shown through artifact 5.3.

Lastly, the remaining part of standard five states that it is important to “…use both formative and summative assessments to determine students’ understanding in each subject area; and be aware of technological tools that can facilitate assessment.” In my practicum, I have been able to use formative and summative assessment especially in the area of mathematics. The Assessment Plan and Report that I created in Assessing Young Children With and Without Special Needs can be used as a formative assessment. In this assessment plan and report, I created ways that I could instruct a student and assess a student throughout the day during assignments in order to better his or her learning. This Assessment Plan and Report is shown through artifact 5.4 I believe I definitely need to know more about how to create summative assessments in a creative way and technological tools that can facilitate assessment. One technological tool that I learned about for the first time through this course was Boardmaker and how that can be used as part of assessments as an aid to students such as English Language Learners. In order to learn more about standard five, I believe I would attend professional development classes that may be available in the school I am hired in but also outside of the school in the community or local colleges.

Overall, assessment is truly a part of teaching. Assessment needs to include students’ interests and yield data about their academic and developmental growth. Assessment should essentially drive the daily instruction in the classroom, and it must consider cultural, familial, and community contexts from which children come.

References

McAfee, O., Leong, D. (2011). Assessing and guiding young children’s development and learning. Pearson Education Inc., NJ.