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IN PRACTICE


Assessment FOR Learning is about how the results of the assessments will be used as opposed to what specific assessments are used.


Look at that statement again. AFL is about how the results of the assessments will be used. I, like many other teachers, was using my assessments primarily for the purpose of determining a grade. I was making sure that I assigned lots of graded work so that I could have more grades to average together in the end. According to AFL, what I should have been doing instead was designing and using assessments so that my students and I could receive quality feedback, which in turn could be used to improve teaching and learning. My focus should not have been on assessing so that I could record grades; my focus should have been on assessing so that I could improve learning. Grading these assessments is only important to the degree to which the grades provide feedback that can then be used by the teacher to better focus instruction and by the students to analyze how well they are mastering the skills or content being taught. In my old classroom, as in countless classrooms across the country, the “feedback” was used by me to determine a final grade. I did not grade to provide descriptive feedback that would help me or my students. AFL principles would lead a teacher to provide grades as feedback that would enable the students to better assess their own understanding and take control of their learning.


Check-up v. Autopsy A good analogy to help one understand AFL is the difference between a check-up and an autopsy. Both check-ups and autopsies play important roles in the field of medicine. Both are necessary, but they serve very different purposes.


First, think about the purpose of an autopsy. The autopsy is an assessment that takes place to determine the cause of a person’s death. While the results can be helpful to those still living, they have no benefit for the person who has died. The person who died cannot stop smoking once it is determined that they died from lung cancer. Now think about a check-up at the doctor’s office. The purpose of the check-up is to determine the health of the patient so that the doctor will know how to better treat the patient’s needs and so that the patient will be able to better improve his or her own health.


The autopsy is the educational equivalent of a summative assessment, or an assessment that summarizes how much a student learned at the end of given period of time. The summative assessment is the end-of-course test, the final exam, or the large unit test. Summative assessment has a role to play in education, and I am by no means implying that educators should not use summative assessment when appropriate. Educators must realize, though, that summative assessments do very little to increase learning or improve teaching. By the


Spring 2011 Vol. 8 No. 1 Virginia Educational Leadership 55


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