Assessment

My first thoughts about assessment are to gauge where a child is at, when you add in assessment of the whole child my thoughts begin to expand.  To me the whole child is academics, social/emotional/adaptive skills, cultural/family influences, and socio-economic influences. If you are assessing the whole child I believe that the list previous should all be addressed/measured.  But how do you go about addressing cultural/family influences so that it is standardized (as much of our assessments are today)?  I am not sure.

When I assess my students, for example when I write my present levels for IEP's or 3 year Evaluations,  I write what students can do in a school setting specifically.  I try and give parents a clear idea of what the students CAN do, not what they can't.  All of my students have significant learning challenges and their parents know that and, I feel, they don't need to be reminded how their child does not do the same things as their same aged peers.

As for standardized assessments that seem to taking over the US in hopes to reform public education, I understand why they have it, but, I believe, are not a true measure of where ALL students are at.  For example, I have a student who does not have the ability to speak.  No one knows why this is, but she can't talk.  We have a district wide assessment that assess early numeracy and early literacy.  Students have to be able to talk to answer the questions and because she can't she is excluded from the test.  All year I have tried to push for us to test her in a different way (using receptive language), but it is not allowed.  Therefore, our district wide test that assess to see if students are at benchmark are skewed because they are not able to account for this child.  It is a good thing that this is not the only assessment we use, but just because this particular girl does not speak doesn't mean that she doesn't know her letters and numbers.

I worked in China and tutored high school girls who were preparing for University and the assessments in China where very interesting to me. It was clear when I arrived in China that being successful in country wide assessments was a vital part of student ultimate success in life.  The high school girls I worked with had so much on their plate, going to school 7 days a week, at least 10 hours a day and then were tutored in their "free time."

As for school-aged children I think there is a lot being done to reform China's 'examination-oriented education.'  China now has a goal for quality based program, the goals being:
1. Increasing parental and public understanding of assessment.
2. Increased emphasis on diagnostic and formative assessment.
3. Improving the ways of assessing schools and teachers. 

When I was in China, it seemed that assessment was a huge part of each child's life.  I talked with other professors and even young school aged children had weekly, mid-term and end of the year exam.  The article that I read said mentioned that the two types of assessment would be end of the year exams and exams to move up (skip) to the next grade (Min & Xiuwen, 2001).  There was such an amount of pressure to perform well in China and I think it is very different in the United States.  Of course we provide assessments on our students but it more through observation and formative assessments, whereas in China there seems to be a summative assessment at the end of each grade.

Min, H., & Xiuwen, Y. (2001). Educational Assessment in China: lessons from history and future prospects. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 8(1), 5-10. doi:10.1080/09695940120033216