Here’s the problem:

There are two primary types of student assessment: formative (think: pre-test or a check to see what you already know) and summative. 

Teachers use formative testing to ascertain what the student already knows and be able to build/teach from there. Summative testing, as I’m sure I don’t have to explain, is what the teacher gives at the end of a unit to determine how much the student learned. The problem arises when we fail to see the connection between these two types of assessment. All summative assessment is and should be formative. 

Huh? But how can a test at the end be a test at the beginning? That doesn’t make any sense!

That’s because you’re thinking like a legislator and not an educator. You see, for educators, the learning process is on-going; it isn’t over just because you took a test. Once you take a summative assessment, you find out what you know and what you don’t know. This allows both the student and the educator to make changes to instruction and develop a new plan of action on how the student can achieve mastery over the sections in which they struggled. By evaluating the areas that the student is weak in, the educator can use a summative assessment as a type of formative assessment, even from one year to the next; even if/when the student gets a new teacher.

This time of year poses a problem for public education. What do you do with students that have already taken “the test” and believe themselves to be “done” for the year? It would be different if students got their actual tests back so that teachers could begin working with students, helping them to master those questions that posed problems for them. On the contrary, educators must take oaths that they will not view nor discuss any test items with any other person. Students’ only feedback is numerical. What score did you make? It isn’t about learning, it’s about pass/fail. It isn’t about progress, it’s about worthless data. When you only care if a child passed or failed, you have completely ruined education. You don’t care about their progress or how much they have learned. You only want them to meet the minimum requirement. It is this attitude of testing, enacted by legislators that don’t actually care about our students enough to help them succeed, that has destroyed public education. 

The solution? Not more testing. Not new names or new dates or new publishers. The solution is simple: devise ways to accurately gauge student learning paired with valuable feedback that rewards progress and helps the education system create a plan of action for student achievement.

Oh, and by the way, “student achievement” should not (and truthfully cannot) be measured with test scores. That would defeat the purpose of assessment.—Greg Garner