PURPOSES OF ASSESSMENT

The primary purpose of assessment is to clearly and accurately create a complete and coherent picture of learning. Assessments are also used to help teachers, administrators, parents, and community members make careful decisions about learning and teaching. Some uses of assessment information are to:

• document achievement,
• guide learning,
• provide information for grading,
• plan teaching,
• portray student progress,
• make comparisons of strategies and methods,
• determine access to special or advanced education,
• develop educational theory,
• allocate resources,
• evaluate the quality of curriculum.

Because assessment is used in making critical decisions about learning and teaching, one of the first questions educators need to ask and answer when planning for quality assessment is its purpose. Pacific mathematics and science educators responded to questions concerning the purposes and uses of assessment as follows:

What do we want our assessments to do for our students?

Our students should:

• be able to self-assess,
• expand their critical and creative thinking,
• become productive citizens,
• be responsible for their own learning,
• understand what is important,
• reflect and evaluate their own progress and the quality of their work,
• become empowered and self-assured,
• be assured that they all have equal opportunities for their education,
• be helped to see themselves realistically,
• believe that they can learn.

What do we want our assessments to do for teachers?

We want our teachers to:

• focus on depth in the curriculum,
• become better listeners and observers,
• know their students well,
• self-assess what they are doing,
• become more thoughtful and reflective thinkers,
• use assessment as information to improve instruction.

What do we want our assessments to do for parents and family?

We want parents and families to:

• have clearer perceptions of their children's learning,
• increase communication about learning with their children,
• actively participate in the learning and assessment process,
• increase communication with the school,
• take a greater role in schooling.

We do not want our assessments to:

• focus on comparing students against each other; instead, students' work should be compared against performance standards,
• stop learning, limit or lower self-esteem,
• pressure teachers to teach to the test,
• force or encourage teachers to spend too much time on test preparation,
• narrow students' access to important mathematics and science,
• limit curriculum to easily assessed knowledge and skills.