Are tests the only objective assessment of student learning?

Before I started teaching 3 years ago, I might have answered yes to this question. I'm a math person, very logical; therefore, an objective assessment meant a test where the grade is based on the percentage of correct answers. Very simple... divide the number correct by the total number and multiply by 100. But I don't feel that way anymore. What changed?

I started teaching. I started learning.

I learned that some kids don't test well. They know the material. I know they know the material. But when they take a "test", they score much lower than expected. Maybe they have test anxiety, or they can't focus for long periods of time without a break, or they're hungry, or they have poor eyesight and can't see the test, or they're tired... I learned that as a teacher, I need more than one way to objectively assess student learning.

The answer? I needed to work collaboratively with the teaching community to share new strategies and best practices. There are so many teaching and assessing tools available that it can get overwhelming: e-portfolios, reflective blogs, group projects, research papers, essays, performance tasks, webquests, lab experiments, etc. But if I'm to meet the needs of all my learners, then I have to have a variety of ways to both present material and assess understanding.

Being the math person that I am, I had no idea how to assign an objective grade to work products like essays or blogs. Then I discovered the wonderful world of rubrics. What more can I ask for?

A rubric is a grading chart that the teacher creates before handing out the assignment. It breaks down every item the teacher is going to be grading and assigns it a point value. It turns grading into something that is completely objective. I think of it as looking at the assignment through a filter. The first time I go through the paper, I'm only looking for the one specific item I am assessing. Once I assign it the appropriate points, I go through the paper again, looking only for the next item I'm assessing. I continue until I've assessed each item and then I tally the points. I love this system...

Just to satisfy my curiousity, I have graded a batch of papers the "old-fashioned" way (without a rubric), then re-graded them with the rubric. I found that things like poor grammar and sloppy penmanship biased my grading. Some people may argue that even with a rubric, the grading is still slightly subjective. However, after seeing the results for myself, I am confident that a well writtin rubric does a great job to ensure objectivity.



I saw this video on youtube and thought it was funny... I
hope you enjoy it, too!

Youtube (2010). Hilarious Professional Development for Teachers. Retrieved June 23, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tt2DXH2ZSk&feature=related