Article response - How to Know What Students Know

Crompton, Marc

Himmele, W., & Himmele, P. (2012). How to know what students know. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 58-62.

Assessment has become a fuzzy term of late.  "Back in the good old days" we cared about what students knew from a purely content perspective.  We measured this easily on instruments that produced "right" and "wrong" answers.  It was beautiful.  We could generate multiple choice tests that we could run through a scantron machine and have three classes marked and percentages calculated in under five minutes.  We could be at the pub in record time. 

Things aren't as clear any more.  We care about things like process and recognize that students aren't all the same.  Some of them express themselves differently and this has little or no correlation to how much "stuff" they actually know.  Himmele and Himmele introduce four techniques for engaging higher-order thinking, ensuring higher participation levels and getting to the root of what students actually know.  They talk about the Chalkboard Splash, the Debate Team Carousel, Picture Notes, and a strategy involving the placement of plastic animals on meaningful passages in a picture book.  While many of these strategies were aimed at elementary aged students, most could be modified easily to fit high school students as well.  Each strategy got students working individually and together in the same process, to pre-assess their own knowledge or feelings on an issue and to build on the ideas of others.  Most of the strategies involved producing something on the way to building that understanding.

Perhaps my favourite aspect of this article on assessment is the complete lack of discussion of grades.  This is a discussion of assessing students knowledge not evaluating, or placing value on, their progress.  With a portfolio of good assessment, a clear picture can be generated of where a student stands in relation to the expected outcomes of a particular course without tests or other "we'd better generate some marks before the end of term" type activities. 

I have a feeling that, if more people ascribe to this point of view, we won't be getting to the pub quite as quickly.  It's simply not as quick and easy to generate a mark with portfolios. But that might be OK, because we'll be having a more enjoyable and meaningful time in class.  We might not want to leave!