                                                              
| Survey of Teacher Opinion on Assessment |
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| Written by Robert A. Southworth Jr. |
| Tuesday, 31 January 2006 03:34 |
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EVIDENCE OF STUDENT LEARNING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ALTERNATIVE POLICIES THAT SUPPORT INSTRUCTIONAL USE OF assessment: A SURVEY OF TEACHER OPINION AND REPORTED PRACTICE CONCERNING THE USE OF STUDENT ASSESSMENT 1999 By Robert A. Southworth, Jr., Ed.D. Adjunct Assistant Professor Curriculum and Teaching Department Teachers College, Columbia University 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10025 212-678-3958 / 310 Main Hall American Educational research Association Conference Session 23.06 on Thursday, April 12, 2001 Frequency Elementary: Elementary teachers are more likely to use these assessments on a monthly basis or greater in descending order of frequency: observation (92.2%), group work (82.7%), short answer (72.6%), exhibitions of student work (67.2%), journals (66.9%), portfolios of student work (62.2%), and teacher created multiple-choice tests (58.1%). Secondary teachers are more likely to use these assessments, in descending order of frequency: observation (82.9%), short answer (80.9%), group work (80.5%), longer answer (65.6%), and teacher-created multiple-choice tests (57.2%). Analysis was also performed by core subjects. Helpfulness in Assessing Learning Elementary: When the analysis turned to how teachers perceived the helpfulness of various types of assessment, elementary teachers in the sample are more likely to say that the following teacher-created performance assessments are very helpful in assessing student learning: observation (82.7%**), portfolios of student work (60.3%**), short answer (49.3%), group work (48.2%), student journals (40.7%**), individual projects (38.5%), and longer answer (37.8%). Elementary teachers acknowledged the increased work and also noted the payoffs in student progress and learning:
Secondary teachers: Secondary teachers in the sample, on the other hand, are most likely to say that the following teacher created performance assessments are very helpful in assessing student learning: observation (64.0%**), longer answer (54.0%), short answer (44.4%), individual projects (39.4%), papers (39.0%**), group work (37.4%), and portfolios of student work (23.2%**). Core Subjects ELA Teachers: Particularly interesting was ELA teacher opinion that the most helpful teacher-created performance assessments are, in order: Observation (78.8%), portfolios of student work (69.6%**), longer answer (56.4%), student journals (53.2%**), and short answer (50.6%*). ELA teachers expressed a sense of the helpfulness that portfolios: “Show student’s true ability (Grade 11-12, ELA teacher / Respondent #2). ELA teachers also understood the professional responsibility inherent in teacher judgment:
Math teachers: math teachers think the most helpful teacher-created performance assessments are, in order of helpfulness: observation (64.8%), portfolios of student work (35.8%**), group work (35.2%), longer answer (35.6%), and short answer (34.0%*).
Benefits and Costs Traditional standardized tests: Although the sample agreed with the benefits and costs of traditional standardized multiple-choice tests, teachers agreed more with the benefits of performance assessments and disagreed more with the costs. For example, teachers agree with the utilitarian benefits of standardized tests that use traditional multiple-choice questions from the benefit of using standardized procedures for scoring (77.4%) and using multiple-choice questions that are easy to score (74.8%) to the benefit of using scores to facilitate comparison of students (71.9%). Teachers understand this usefulness for what these tests can and cannot do, as this comment by one respondent reflects:
Teachers in this sample are in strong disagreement with earlier research literature that says traditional multiple-choice tests are valid and reliable. For example, only 33.8% of teachers in this sample agree that standardized tests are valid whereas 49.0% disagree
For example, 53.3% of teachers agree that standardized tests emphasize lower-order thinking skills. In addition to the cost of memorizing, 63.7% of the sample agree that standardized tests reward guessing correctly, 56.8% agree that these tests may be culturally biased, and 60.4% agree that standardized tests limit or narrow the curriculum. Performance Assessments: Elementary and secondary teachers agree that performance assessments increase student responsibility for learning (92.8%) and improve student understanding (89.7%). It is interesting to note that not only is the agreement about Performance Assessment’s benefits to students greater than any of the perceived benefits of multiple-choice tests, but it is also the strongest agreement between all teachers in the sample over any survey question.
Teachers are quite strong in opinion when 78.9% agree that performance assessments get students to undertake challenging work and 77.6% agree that these types of assessments increase student ability for self-assessment. Teachers in the sample are fairly strong in their endorsement of how performance assessment helps teachers assess student strength and weakness (90.6%) and makes student learning visible to the teacher (89.2%). Performance assessments may also yield other benefits; for example, when 85.6% agree that performance assessments sample diverse student cognitive skills and abilities and 80.8% of all teachers agree that performance assessments are an ongoing process that chronicles development. Also, 74.2% of the sample agree that performance assessments are collaborative between student and teacher and 65.3% of the sample agree that performance assessments are anchored in authenticity. Most interestingly, the potential costs of performance assessments were not a major concern for teachers in this sample. For example, 56.1% disagreed that performance assessments were too time consuming to evaluate/grade, 71.2% of teachers disagreed that performance assessments make it hard to explain student learning, and 60.3% of teachers disagreed that performance assessments make it hard to compare student achievement. Performance assessments were also the preferred assessment method for communicating to parents, outsiders, and policymakers. Implications for Further Research The results suggest that the New York State Education Department should create new policies that establish a relationship of importance with teachers in order to more fully understand the exact professional knowledge held by teachers and to re-align the state’s assessment system to reflect Capacity-building policies and strategies that highlight and support teacher thinking about student performance. The majority of the sample reports that performance assessments were the most helpful method of assessment currently available to them and many think multiple-choice tests are not valid and reliable. Research and Policy should begin with understanding the learning advantage performance assessments convey to both teachers and students:
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