This contrast illustrates the more general point that one size of assessment does not fit all. Large-scale, standardized tests do communicate efficiently across time and place, but by so constraining the content and timeliness of the message that they often have little utility in the classroom. Yet precisely because they are individualized and highly contextualized, neither the rationale nor the results of typical classroom assessments are easily communicated beyond the classroom. Part of the power of classroom assessment resides in these connections. To guide instruction and monitor its effects, teachers need information that is intimately connected with the work their students are doing, and they interpret this evidence in light of everything else they know about their students and the conditions of instruction. The sharp contrast that typically exists between classroom and largescale assessment practices arises because assessment designers have not been able to fulfill the purposes of different assessment users with the same data and analyses. Second is large-scale assessment, used by policy makers and educational leaders to evaluate programs and/or obtain information about whether individual students have met learning goals. Here assessment is used by teachers and students mainly to assist learning, but also to gauge students’ summative achievement over the longer term. In this chapter we expand on the idea, introduced in Chapter 2, that synergy can best be achieved if the three parts of the system are bound by or grow out of a shared knowledge base about cognition and learning in the domain.Įducational assessment occurs in two major contexts. Often assessment taps only a subset of curriculum and without regard to instruction, and can narrow and distort instruction in unintended ways (Klein, Hamilton, McCaffrey, and Stecher, 2000 Koretz and Barron, 1998 Linn, 2000 National Research Council, 1999b). In actuality, however, the relationships among assessment, curriculum, and instruction are not always ideal. Ideally, instruction is faithful and effective in relation to curriculum, and assessment reflects curriculum in such a way that it reinforces the best practices in instruction. Furthermore, the information gained should be put to good use by informing decisions about curriculum and instruction and ultimately improving student learning (Falk, 2000 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1995).Īssessments do not function in isolation an assessment’s effectiveness in improving learning depends on its relationships to curriculum and instruction. In education, as in other professions, good decision making depends on access to relevant, accurate, and timely information. To this end, people should gain important and useful information from every assessment situation. The aim of assessment should be “ to educate and improve student performance, not merely to audit it” (Wiggins, 1998, p.7). Based on research into and descriptions of the characteristics of effective thinkers and high performers, theįramework focuses on the patterns of thought and behavior individuals must draw upon in order to effectively navigate complex and uncertain situations.Although assessments are currently used for many purposes in the educational system, a premise of this report is that their effectiveness and utility must ultimately be judged by the extent to which they promote student learning. The Institute's mission is to transform schools into learning communities where thinking and Habits of Mind are taught, practiced, valued, and infused into the culture. Bena Kallick, co-founders of the Institute for Habits of Mind. They are displayed by intelligent people in response to problems, dilemmas, and enigmas. The Habits of Mind are a set of thinking dispositions at the core of social, emotional, and cognitive behaviors.
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