ASSESSMENT STANDARDS

EVALUATING THE QUALITY OF STUDENT WORK

Quality assessment used to evaluate learning includes clear and open criteria for making judgments about the quality of student work.

Evaluating the quality of student work is an essential part of assessment. Evaluation is based on quality assessment when worthwhile tasks are carried out and judged according to clear criteria that are known to students and which can be used by them to improve the quality of their work prior to evaluation. Evaluation must focus on student work, and not on the personality or other personal characteristics of students.

Quality assessment leads to accurate evaluation when:

• there are clear criteria that focus on the important elements of a successful performance,
• it focuses on the work itself and how it compares to agreed-upon descriptions of an excellent performance,
• there is common understanding among teachers and between teachers and students of what quality work looks like.

Clear criteria are at the heart of the evaluation that results from quality assessments. Effective teachers use agreed-upon criteria to give feed forward as students grow in their understandings and work toward evaluative assessment. Criteria used to assess learning and growth are powerful descriptions that define quality performance. These criteria help students make choices, assess themselves, and discover areas for improvement. Criteria are often developed collaboratively by groups of teachers or by teachers and students. They are then used systematically to improve student work. Such criteria are used:

• by the teacher to assess student work,
• for student self-assessment so that students can monitor their own progress, achievement, and growth in a given area and then set goals,
• as the basis for students' self-reflections on the quality of their work,
• to help students expand their thinking and understanding related to a given content area,
• as a springboard from which students develop and apply their own criteria, thereby expanding their personal vision of what it means to be successful.

Because quality assessment provides opportunities for success by all students and provides them with opportunities to demonstrate excellence, effective teachers use the information obtained through assessment in a nonjudgmental way to talk with students about the current status of their work and encourage them to continue improving the quality of their products. This view of assessment values learning as an ongoing developmental process. Students know what they are working toward and can use the assessment information to adjust and improve their work.