Running head: PHILOSOPHY OF ASSESSMENT 1

Philosophy of Assessing and Grading Student Learning

Sara Campbell

Salt Lake Community College

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My goal as a teacher is to help students in their quest for success. That involves

maintaining high standards but doing everything in my power to ensure students have the

knowledge, help, and resources that they need to reach goals. Assessment is an invaluable tool

for helping students succeed in the classroom. "When performance is measured, performance

improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates"

(Monson, 1970). These are a few principles I hope students can develop an understanding of and

become comfortable with as they participate in a variety of formative and summative assessment

methods.

I believe formal tests are an extremely useful method of assessment. It holds students

accountable to take responsibility for their learning and allows the teacher to gauge what was

learned. I intend to utilize the traditional post-test, but also want to utilize pretests and mid-unit

tests. Students don’t generally like to do poorly on tests, but they also don’t tend to enjoy

spending time and effort on topics that won’t be covered. While learning for its own sake is

something I hope to instill in students, I don’t feel that asking them to study material that they

don’t know they won’t be graded on is necessarily the way to do it. When it is clear from the

beginning and all along what will affect their grade, they can study more efficiently, which will

improve their attitudes towards school and studying. Providing formal assessments along the

way helps establish clear expectations, show encouraging progress, and highlight areas for

improvement so that when students reach the graded final they can not only perform well, but do

so with confidence in their knowledge and less stress. It also allows me with more opportunities

to provide positive feedback and determine what topics to spend more time on.

Regarding grading, I will allow students to retake tests an unlimited number of times.

This gives them the opportunity to practice and evaluate themselves in preparation for graded
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tests and/or to improve if they’ve done poorly. Considering one of my objectives as a teacher is

to ensure students complete the course with an understanding of certain concepts, allowing them

to retake tests not only helps achieve that end but does so in a more positive way than saying

they’ve failed and can’t do anything about it. It encourages them to learn from and fix their

mistakes. While pretests and mid-unit tests will not be “graded”, students will earn credit for

improving their scores by 5% or more and/or maintaining above 90%. This way, students will be

rewarded for their improvement and maintaining of good study skills.

According to Kauchak and Eggen, “without alignment [between instruction and

assessment], it is difficult to know what is being learned” (2017, p.362). For this reason, while I

may use multiple choice sparingly, or perhaps humorously to relieve stress, I intend to generally

avoid it as I don’t consider it to be very effective. It promotes guessing and many students

become very good at it, which can falsely display what students do and don’t struggle with.

Instead, I will design all test questions to directly address the skills and concepts emphasized in

class.

In addition to more traditional tests, I want to provide a variety of teaching and

application opportunities and projects that will allow students to use, cement, and show the

things that they’ve learned. These assignments can be used for both formative and summative

purposes. There will be times when a project or presentation may substitute a traditional test.

Finally, in my philosophy of classroom management I discussed the concept of holding a

weekly or bi-weekly check-in with each individual student for them to report their efforts,

concerns, etc. Because projects will often incorporate a great deal of autonomy, regularly

meeting with each student to evaluate where they’re at and to set goals will allow me to hold

them accountable and gather helpful information. Together we’ll agree on realistic, relevant, and
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measurable goals that they will receive credit for completing. I feel confident and excited about

this procedure as I once had a class like this in high school and found it to be refreshing,

motivating, and effective.

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REFERENCES:

Kauchak, D. P., & Eggen, P. D. (2017). Introduction to teaching: Becoming a professional (6th

ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Monson, T. S. (1970, October). Speech presented at 140th Semi-Annual General Conference of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, Salt Lake City.