Assessment should play a key role in elementary education as long as it serves to monitor student growth and guide future learning. I believe that plenty of formative assessment is in order before any summative assessment is undertaken. During my EDUC 391 practicum, I taught all the math and social studies lessons for a Grade 3 class. In math, up until the day of the summative assessment, I graded students’ written work as they completed it during the lesson and gave them time to complete their corrections so they could see and learn from their mistakes in real time. Doing this not only helped students to see where they needed to pay more attention in their own learning, but it also helped me see what I may need to highlight again in the next lesson or spend more time teaching. It was beneficial for both parties to practice engaging in plenty of formative assessments. I also came into the classroom with a unit plan to guide my math lessons and this helped tremendously as we worked through the unit because I knew where my students needed to end up to succeed on the summative assessment. After they completed the summative assessment, I marked it and wrote descriptive comments about how each student progressed in their learning and where their understanding now stands.
In my view, assessments are most effective, impactful, and relevant when they are delivered by the classroom teacher or another staff member whom students trust and have a relationship with. Assessments should be relevant and linked to the material that has been taught within a specific classroom. I often wonder whether standardized assessments are providing an accurate glimpse into students’ abilities. Especially in primary grades, I wonder if standardized reading proficiency check-ins which often take just a few minutes and are often administered by someone who is a stranger to the child, are all that helpful compared to what the classroom teacher observes over weeks or months. I understand that a baseline and gaining a sense of how the overall system is scoring may be important. Still, I do not believe that standardized assessments can paint a fulsome picture of the learning or the growth a student has experienced in a given timeframe and their results should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.
Additionally, assessment practices can impact teacher-student relationships which is why I think students should only be assessed on material that was explicitly explored and practiced within the classroom. If students are tested or assessed on content knowledge or skills they were not given the opportunity to practice adequately, that may erode the level of trust between the teacher and the students.
In conclusion, the primary role of assessment in elementary education should be to guide future learning and gain insight into the areas where students are succeeding and where they are struggling. These insights should then be shared with parents and guardians.