My Thoughts on Assessments

While at West Elementary, I have experienced quite a few assessments. Each day, they do "Rocket Math." This is a series of timed subtraction tests. The first level is "A," and when they get all 40 problems correct, they get to move on to "B," and so on. The purpose of these are to test their subtraction abilities.

I also got to be there for the Math Fluency Assessment. This was a series of three parts, regarding coin value. First, they had to identify the different types of coins. Then they had to show us values using play money.

There was also a Reading Fluency Assessment. I got to do these. We timed them for one minute, and they had to read as far as they could. We then counted the amount of words they could read. (Any missed words or words read incorrectly were not counted)

The last assessment is one we are going through right now, which is the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. I have been working with one individual boy. My job is to sit next to him the intire test and point to each question, because otherwise he gets distracted by looking around the room. For the Reading portions of the test, I take him and work with him in a separate room. We go somewhere that noone else is, because he can concentrate much better in that type of environment. This child cannot read very well at all. He can sound out each letter separately, but when it comes time to combine the sounds to make a word, he ends up either saying something that isn't even a word, or he will say a word that sounds nothing like the letters that he sounded out.

Basically my opinion on assessments is that they are great for the bright kids, but those who struggle even a little bit will not have much luck with them. In my opinion, I found all the assessments to be extremely stressful situations. First of all, you are limited on your time. 3/4 of those kids were probably thinking more about how much time was left, than how to complete the task they were assigned. I think it would also be stressful because for the majority of the assessments done, the kids were called to sit alone with the teacher, so she could watch them work. I hated having teachers stare me down while I was working. I always remembered having a harder time on tests that were timed, or tests that were done individually. They put tremendous pressure on me, and I don't think I am alone in feeling that way.

In my experience, all assessments are unfair. I know a lot of kids who are so bright in class. I witnessed it in my cooperating teacher's classroom. I would call on them for a math fact, and they would nail it. But when they were forced to take a big, stressful test, they missed almost every question. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do assessments, but they shouldn't be made into such a big deal. It's not fair to basically tell kids "We are going to judge you on how you do on these timed, standardized tests." All kids learn differently, and I would think that especially in today's society we would realize that. I guess I can't really offer an alternative, because I don't really know one, but all I can say is that we need to find a different way of measuring a child's intellect than by giving them all the same, timed, fill-in-the-bubble tests.