Question: What is the role of assessment (formative and summative) in supporting adolescents literacy development?

Answer: The role of all types of assessment is, in short, to inform instruction. Whether it is formative or summative, assessment should be designed to enhance teaching and improve learning. In adolescent literacy development, I believe the role of assessment is twofold. First, I believe that it should inform teaching and second, I believe that it should enhance learning. Formative assessment should be used as a check in tool for students, whereas summative assessment should be used as an overall look at the teaching of a particular unit or skill. In the age of high stakes standardized tests, such as the NJASK, the word information is rarely used in conjunction with assessment, and instead, is replaced with words such as judgment or pressure, at least in the eyes of the students who take them. While I do not question the intentions of high stakes standardized testing, I do question their structure. Were they really designed to inform instruction or were they just designed to give scores? Have we, as a nation, lost the value of what it really means to assess students? In my opinion, assessment should never be used as a got you for students. Teachers should instead be using it as a sort of got you on themselves. If a student proves to not understand something when asked a question or given a test, then the weight of their understanding rests partially on the teacher reinventing his or her instruction. Assessment should work cyclically. Teachers should use things such as observations, informal and assessments, to inform their instruction and then modify it accordingly. Following the instruction, students should use things such as summative assessment to inform their learning. They should use their scores or comments from the assessment to note information with which they struggle. Then they can focus on those problem spots and improve upon them. Once students improve, teachers then can assess them again and inform future instruction, thus restarting the assessment cycle. By working with this cycle, students and teachers can get back to the original purpose of assessmentto inform and enhance teaching and learning!