Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission
to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
Assessment of learning is among the most controversial
issues in education, and one of the most misunderstood. At its core, assessment
is the planned process for collecting information to aid in decision-making for
many different purposes.
Assessments are used to provide feedback to learners
about how well they have mastered a body of knowledge. The information that
assessments provide can help teachers to improve instruction for groups or
individual students. Assessments are the basis for informing parents about the
progress their children are making in meeting expectations at grade levels or
in specific subjects.
The information provided by assessments communicates
to external audiences whether a student has met standards for graduation or the
award of a certificate of accomplishment. Post-secondary institutions and
employers use the information provided by assessments for admission or for judging
whether a person can perform the tasks required of someone in the position for
which the person has applied.
Assessments allow policy makers to determine how well
the system is achieving the result it is expected to achieve (ensuring levels
of literacy or numeracy, for example). Information from assessments provides
assurance to internal and external audiences that the resources and
responsibilities assigned to the institution are being used effectively (and
being fulfilled). Claims for financial resources depend in part on information
provided by assessments. When responsibility for vulnerable populations is
shared among institutions, assessment information helps those institutions to
know if they are living up to their shared obligations (for example, the
education of children and youth in care).
In the competition for scarce resources, assessment
information can call attention to places where the development of policy, the
allocation of resources, the refinement of practices, and the initiation of
programs should occur (improving mental health, for example) or where
improvement is needed (Indigenous education, anti-racism, etc.).
Institutions that rely on public resources (tax
dollars) use assessment information to respond to the public’s interest in
knowing whether to place confidence in those institutions. There are multiple
dimensions to ensuring the public’s confidence. One is over-all system
performance, another is the performance of one’s children and grand-children,
and a third – related, of course, to the first two – is equity. Are the
outcomes students achieve from the contribution of schooling influenced by who
the students are or where they live, or do students thrive regardless of their
identities and places of residence?
Opposition to large-scale assessment seems contrary to
the aspirations of those who seek social justice and who advocate for
additional resources for the support of vulnerable populations. Yet, that
opposition does occur. Having the confidence of parents of children who are
vulnerable seems crucial to making the case for more and better resources.
Being able to demonstrate the differences those resources and efforts make for individual
students who face challenges, and for their similarly challenged peers, strikes
me as an essential ingredient in the arguments that social justice advocates
employ.
I am not naïve. Assessment information was once used
to justify sexism and racism. More recently it has been used to make invidious
comparisons of one school to another based on dubious assumptions using
questionable methodologies. I devoted an entire blog
to the misuse of large scale assessment to compare schools.
I am an optimist, I strongly believe that assessment
information can make a tangible difference to the education of all students
and, especially, students who, because of circumstances beyond their control or
the control of their parents, face the most challenges to succeed.