Assessment in American education is changing. We are moving from a grading system that emphasizes testing and grades to creations and rubrics. Under this system we will be able to more accurately reflect student achievement using a variety of real world methods.
Assessment has three main functions, to check for understanding, motivate students to work, and to create a measurement system for college and job acceptance. The problem is that testing and other conventional grading methods to not reflect actual understanding. In my computer science class, often a student will not complete an assignment, but will have learned a lot in the process of attempting, while another student received help (maybe even from me) and though he or she finished, he or she didn't gain much new knowledge. Under traditional grading methods, the first student would receive poor marks and the second excellent ones. The conventional system clearly encourages dependence instead of research and real learning. Grades do motivate students, however. No matter how much we try to make our classes interesting, the fact is that the students have to be here, which reduces intrinsic motivation. There needs to be some form of pressure to get the job done. Grades do that. Holistic assessment is a way of grading students on effort and real learning, while taking away the pressure that encourages cheating. Grades are required for competitive reasons, which make them important to students. Colleges and jobs want something to base their decisions upon. If we have a system that rewards effort, learning, and finally production, colleges and human resource departments will have something more valuable to base their decisions upon.
Students are more than mere test scores. Testing shows who is a good test taker as much as it shows who understands the material. When I was in college, I took a Spanish class with my good friend. Each week we were required to watch a particular Spanish soap opera and were given quizzes over the material. I made straight 100s. My friend made B's and C's. The problem? I never watched the show. He watched all of them. Sometimes twice. The testing method did not reflect our effort or understanding. If that teacher had based her opinions on us over those quiz grades, she would have gotten a very wrong picture. Luckily, she saw the excellent work my friend and I did on our Spanish performance projects, and she focused our grades on this type of real learning assignments. When I think back on that class, I know I didn't learn anything from the soap opera I didn't watch or the quizzes I somehow aced. On the other hand, watching El Mariahci, researching Spanish film, and creating our own spoof of the film is my favorite project from college, not only because it was fun, but because I worked hard and learned a lot. That is who I am as a student. Not my quiz scores.
Therefore, the teacher's role in assessing is to provide an environment that stimulates creativity and pushes the student to learn more, but allows them to play up their own strengths. As teachers, we must learn to account for individual differences among our students and utilize a variety of different assessment methods so that students will never get stuck being assessed solely on a method that they are not good at. Teachers need to value the whole student and recognize them for their individual accomplishments, regardless of their performance in your class. Finally, teachers need to focus grading on effort and production more than testing and worksheets.
I hope that the trend towards holistic grading continues in the future, hopefully expanding to college applications. Everyone benefits when the whole student is taken into account and projects are set forth to promote effort and genuine learning as opposed to memorization and lucky guessing.