React/Comment in the light of Classroom Assessment and Evaluation: “The most important “things” in life cannot be measured”

Classroom assessment and evaluation seeks to gauge the student’s performance through validated tests and other ways but does this really measure a student’s performance? Or more importantly, what the student has learned? Can knowledge be measured? Can intelligence be measured? What about multiple intelligence? Can that be measured?

Teachers create tests based on objectives they have stated in their lesson plan with the aim of inducing learning in students.  They develop written exams [like multiple choice exams] by item analysis and norming to get a standard to which the student will be compared to.  The test validity is checked and distractors are analyzed.

As good as the process seems, I believe this can only measure a student’s knowledge up to a certain point.  It does not measure the entirety of the student’s knowledge.  These tests assess only what is in the present, they don’t measure how a student will apply what he has learned later on in life.  Sometimes these tests are only geared to logical-mathematical, and language-oriented students.  What about the musical oriented students or the artistic-oriented students?  How can their learning be measured and evaluated if the test does not appeal to their intelligence?  Will a written test be appropriate to measure what they have learned?  They might have learned in another way which is different with how the test wants to gauge it.  That is why I believe that a student’s knowledge cannot be measured.  A student’s knowledge is like a river [flowing through life].  Classroom assessment and evaluation is like a port in the river, it can see the effects of the river up to the area which encompasses the port.  In other words, classroom assessment and evaluation only measure a certain point in a student’s knowledge development.  It does not measure the knowledge which a student can acquire in his whole life.

I believe that knowledge cannot be measured but classroom assessment and evaluation seeks to at least measure it in the form of tests.  These tests might not measure the entire scope of knowledge that a student has amassed and some tests are not geared correctly towards the student’s intelligences but a properly created test can provide a certain measure which is enough to satisfy scholastic standards.

“ Should formative assessment be recorded and computed as grade?”

I think that formative assessment should be recorded and computed as grade since it is still a record of a student's performance albeit in the middle of the lesson.  Formative assessments gage a student's understanding of the lesson while the lesson is going on.  It provides the teacher with a point of comparison to know if the student is learning the lesson accordingly.  Say for example that there is a student whose name is Carl.  His teacher, Sigmund, wants to know if his student is learning about Psychoanalysis (their topic) up to schedule or is learning it accordingly.  The topic is being covered for two weeks, after which there would be a mastery exam about Psychoanalysis (which would be the summative assessment).  He administers a 10 item multiple choice exam about the topics covered at the end of every meeting to gage if the student understands the lesson (formative assessment).  Teacher Sigmund finds out that Carl had a couple of items mistaken after the discussion on the three parts of the personality.  He also finds out that Carl correctly answered all the items after the discussion on defense mechanisms.  Armed with this knowledge, he can adjust his lesson to fit Carl's needs.  He can also check to see if there was any change in Carl's learning after he administers the summative assessment.  For Carl's part, the results from the tests every meeting can give him feedback on what he needs to follow-up on or reread and what topics he already has learned.  More importantly, it can give him assurance that he already has some good test results which can be added to his overall grade on the lesson.  Formative assessments should be recorded because they can provide additional components to the final grade a student can get in a subject.  They can be included in the final grade computation so that a student will know that his final grade is not depended upon the results of his final exam which would put less anxiety on the student.  It would also let the teacher calculate the final grade objectively and with confidence, since he has taken into account the assessments of learning which were administered after every meeting.

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