It would be fair to say that part of the reason I have never wanted to go into a traditional classroom setting is because I don’t agree with many of the traditional assessment methods. Of course, I then went to work for a company that creates standardized tests, both as a scorer and as a content editor. Now I work for a tutoring program where we have to assign grades to every single activity the student does.

I feel a bit hypocritical.

The theory behind assessment is a simple one: to gauge whether or not the student has accomplished the learning objective. For some reason, someone decided that the way this is best accomplished in the continental US is by assigning pieces of paper with strings of words crafted carefully into questions to elicit a response from the student. This really only tests the student’s knowledge of the theory behind the learning objecting. In many cases, it doesn’t test the child’s practical knowledge.

When we create our learning objectives, we generally have a change in behavior that we want to produce in the student. The learning objective does not address how we want to change that behavior. It merely states what we want to change.

So many teachers take the time to create relevant learning situations for students to help them learn both the theory and the practical of the learning objective. They create worksheets, hands-on projects, and relevant culminating projects to help the student grasp the concept. They then give them a test on a piece of paper that asks them to talk concretely about the individual aspects of what they learned, generally out of context. That’s the first problem with assessment. It moves the student out of context.

This is where authentic assessment could actually be a more useful assessment. It’s often avoided because it doesn’t provide a simple number-crunching way to assign a grade. Instead a rubric must be developed, and each student must be graded against themself instead of a number crunching scheme. But sometimes, it gives a much more relevant picture of what the student has actually learned. The student who excels in coursework, but chokes on every exam might very well be one who would benefit more from an authentic assessment.

In schools, each skill builds on the previous. We start by checking for prior learning. There is a continual assessment going on to make sure a student has actually learned a skill. In the corporate world, this continual assessment isn’t quite as persistent. An employee goes to a training. It’s assumed that they will come back to work and use the new skills in their job. This would seem like reinforcing, but what happens when it is a skill that isn’t used frequently. The employee may have taken notes during the training, but with everything going on they may have forgotten temporarily how to implement that skill. In these corporate settings, the only assessment given is whether or not the employee can effectively and immediately transfer the skills to their tasks. It’s black and white, pass and fail. No wonder so many employees are a nervous wreck!

It is important to keep assessment authentic and persistent. Very few people learn everything they need to in a single sitting.