Assessment & Data

In days gone by, the prime purpose of assessment, other than Year 12, was twofold:

1. provide teachers with data on their students’ learning in order to tailor their learning and teaching strategies to personalise programs for each and every student to develop to their potential: assessment for learning.
2. provide parents with reports of the learning progress of their loved ones: assessment for reporting. 

In today’s educational environment we seem to be in a never ending cycle of assessing, assessing and assessing on every single thing our students do to obtain more and more data. The vast majority of these snapshot assessments are in the form of tests; what about catering for:

• differing student learning styles?
• the usage of Habits of Mind?
• the varying Emotional and Multiple Intelligences students possess?
• the usage of thinking tools?

Teachers have been employing the above learning and teaching strategies and more with great effect to create inclusive learning environments for their students and embracing contemporary initiatives:

• Yet the imposed testing has been very narrow in its scope and nearly all summative and regurgitative in nature. 
• Just how accurate then is the data been collected when the testing has not been inclusive of all students? 
• How can judgments be made on students’ and schools’ performance from such potentially flawed data? 

Data driven change makes wonderful sense, so long as it is obtained in a manner in which every single child has an equal opportunity to show his/her understanding, knowledge and capacity to use it in his/her world:

• personalised programs can then be developed for each and every student
• teachers, collectively the world class experts on learning and teaching, would have the data they require to enter into meaningful dialogue with each other in order to establish appropriate school wide pedagogies necessary to address the issues identified in the data. 

A few quandaries; while it is essential for all students to obtain a kit of essential literacy’s for life:

• why is it imperative to compare schools systemically when they start on uneven playing fields?
• where is the “value added” assessed for each student?
• why is it when publically applauding “fabulous” Year 12 results from certain schools, does the system not also report on longitudinal studies that show clearly that these students constitute the majority of students who fail to complete their chosen courses?
• how do you assess resilience, resourcefulness, persistence, initiative? Why are these valuable attributes not assessed and reported on systemically?

Unfortunately, systemically we are obsessed with academic data, but what about the citizenship fabric, employment preparedness, commitment to leaving the comfort zone, the willingness to do what has to be done to finish the job, etc.; these are the basics that underpin our society, that see us' as a nation grow, that produce the Australians who will perform the vast majority of the jobs that have to be done

- our current assessment approach caters for a select few.

Several years ago, while in Asia speaking with a group of Asian Principals, they portrayed to me in no uncertain terms that their system didn’t want “everyone academically smart”. They said that their nations needed a spread of talent:

• fisherman; they had schools devoted to fishing
• farmers; they had schools devoted to farming
• workers; they had schools devoted to acquiring everyday essential skills
• managers; they had highly academic schools

Then each type of school’s assessment procedures fitted their requirements. Australia is 220 years young, let’s learn from these cultures 1000’s of years old which have been there and done that.

 “If we weigh something 50 times, does it get heavier?” Prakash Nair