Assessing student learning

When I think about assessments, tests are only one method.  Tests should not be the only way to assess student learning.  In fact, there are many ways to assess student learning.  They include projects, presentations, papers and portfolios.  Now with the help of technology, we can use e-portfolios, electronic presentations, projects and blogs.

Many times, non-teachers think that the best way to measure student learning is by using standardized testing, but it’s not.  The best way to measure students learning and growth is to use different tools.  Tests can measure what was learned during the week, quarter or entire year but that is only a portion of information that the scores give.  For example, for me to see how much students know about a topic, I prefer for them to create a product to demonstrate their learning.  I’m not saying that getting the correct answers on a multiple-choice test is wrong, but there needs to be more to show. 

As a teacher, I like for my students to see their growth over the course of the year through projects, papers and our quarterly test scores.  Since we are in a 1to1 laptop classroom, we have all assignments organized into folders by subject and titles on our laptops.  This method helps us stay organized and doesn’t require me to have a huge pile of papers to save.  So in my opinion, tests are not the only objective assessments of student learning.