Does your testing match your teaching style? - includes related articles

Instructor, Sept, 1994 by Janet H. Brown, Richard J. Shavelson

Why you may want to adopt performance-assessment practices--how to manage them, and what your students will gain from them.

Your students are learning by doing--rolling up their sleeves to work on a science project, hunkering down in the reading corner with a novel, or taking a turn at the computer to revise a story. Children learn best this way, but do traditional testing methods adequately assess this type of learning? How can you make the transition to using assessments that will give you a truer picture of what students know and can do?

To help you navigate your journey toward new assessments, we spoke with Marilyn Bachman, a sixth-grade teacher at the Montecito Union School in Santa Barbara, California, who use performance assessments. Marilyn explains why she made the leap to a new way of testing her students, and tells what she's gained.

Why do you use performance assessments?

I began looking around for another way of testing science four years ago because my students were thriving on the labs, but weren't doing that well on multiple-choice tests. They thought that science wasn't fair: The test didn't match what they were learning in the lab. I worried that this would turn them away from science. I knew I had to find a way of testing--performance assessment was it.

I adopted performance assessments for reading and writing for a similar reason--I was teaching children to understand and appreciate books, and to write, but the traditional tests I used dealt with nouns and verbs.

So why is performance assessment so useful?

We are finally asking children to think when we test them, not just recall facts. Performance assessment asks students to apply their learning to relevant situations, and that's an amazing motivator for them.

What do you mean by a real-world situation?

Recently I taught my students about area. As part of a performance assessment, they all had to go home and measure the square area of their house. Some succeeded, some failed, but not one student was stuck thinking, Why do I need to know this? When curriculum and assessment are tied to real-life problem-solving, students have a reason to learn.

Have you done away with traditional tests altogether?

No, traditional tests are valid for testing students' factual knowledge. For example, I use a multiple-choice test to find out if my students know particular pieces of science knowledge, such as the boiling point of water at sea level. Teachers need to know that it's okay to combine traditional tests with performance assessments, as long as they are aware that what you test for is what you get.

Tell us how you embed performance assessments into a typical science unit.

For each unit, students spend nine to ten days doing hands-on learning activities, which I call labs. I give two performance assessments during the unit and one at the end of the unit. My students treat the performance assessments as just another lab activity, except that they usually work individually and receive no help from me.

The students work with concrete materials to solve a real problem, using the science knowledge they have learned in the unit. For example, in one assessment I use, students figure out how they can hook up a circuit so that the light varies in intensity, thereby sending a signal to a friend.

After I score the assessments, I review the scoring criteria with the students. This helps them to focus on the quality of their work. Meanwhile, I get detailed information about how effective the learning activities have been, so I know if I need to modify an activity or elaborate on a particular concept.

How do informal assessments fit in with your formal assessments?

During the 35-minute lab, I walk around the room observing how students are handling the procedure and working together. This is a big part of my informal assessment. I may sit with each group, and help them out. Throughout, I'm listening to kids, finding out what they think. I make notes to myself on a clipboard. These observations give me a good idea of what I need to reteach the next day, or I may note things about the lab that need to be changed.

Do you evaluate students' lab notebooks and journals as part of your informal evaluation?

Yes, I review them daily. Giving students immediate feedback is key to their growth in science. This could be time-consuming, but it's manageable because I give the performance assessments as my "formal" evaluation. I know I don't need to evaluate every part of each lab. Instead, I focus each day on just one part of the lab, such as the data chart--Does it have a title? Does it serve the data? Is it clearly presented? Then I score the lab notebooks as a whole, based on the particular focus. I've found that using performance assessments can actually save you time.

What information can you get from performance assessments that you can't get from informal evaluations?

Performance assessments help me gain a fresh, unbiased look at what students can really do on their own. Because I frequently assist students during lab, and encourage groups to work on an activity cooperatively, I really don't have a clear grasp about who understands what until I give a formal assessment.