Are Tests the Only Measure of Student Learning?

Are Tests the Only Objective Measure of Student Learning?

Howard Gardner speaks about multiple intelligence and testing.

     The simple answer to this question is yes.  Objective assessments measure correct and incorrect answers.  Assessments of this type are common in education because they are quick and easy to arrive at a numeric score or "grade".  Numeric scores are easy to rank and compare, which makes them extremely popular in this age of heightened accountability for teachers and schools.  However objective assessments can, by their nature, only assess the lowest three levels of Bloom's taxonomy.  Those levels are:  knowledge, comprehension, and application.  The higher three levels (often called "higher order thinking skills") cannot be assessed in a right or wrong format, since they involve the skills of analysis, evaluation, and original creation.  The assessment of these skills is subjective in nature.  These are the types of skills we want our students to have in the twenty-first century.  These are the skills they will need to get and keep a high-paying jobs or to change from one career to another.

     Facts and figures are just the jumping off point for higher order thinking.  And as teachers we should be in the business of evaluating this cognition, not just the recall of facts and figures.  We can leave that for the creators of our high-stakes state testing.  In other words, we should evaluate students using a range of assessments.  These assessments could include: testing, performance tasks, projects, and observation to name a few (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

     Even that is not enough.  These evaluations need to be part of a "Continuous Assessment Loop" (Martell and Calderon, 2005) in order to improve student learning.  A Continuous Assessment Loop contains the steps of analyzing the assessment, discussing the results with stakeholders, identifying ways for students to improve outcomes, making instructional changes, and re-identifying goals.  I know I have posted her video before, but Jennifer Jones (one of my teacher-heroes) of Lake Myra Elementary in North Carolina and blogger at  helloliteracy.blogspot.com demonstrates that CA Loop so vividly in this video:

     Technology can make this Continuous Assessment Loop easier for teachers to manage and maintain.  Technology is most useful in tracking and analyzing data over time, rubric creation, and storing digital artifacts (Buzzetto-More and Alade, 2006).

References

Buzzetto-More, N.A. and Alade, A.J. (2006) Best practices in e-assessment.  Journal of Information Technology Education, Vol. 5, pags. 261-269.