1. Chapter 10
Assessment That Guides Instruction
Nancy Dean & Jeannette Schiffbauer
University of Florida
The purpose of assessment is twofold: to provide teachers with the knowledge they need to
plan instruction and support student learning and to provide students with the knowledge they
need to become more reflective, active, and purposeful learners…
Teachers need to
Understand the characteristics of quality assessment
Be able to describe the process and purposes of authentic assessment
Design effective, authentic assessment
Create and use rubrics that meet specific student needs and assignments
How can teachers devise high-quality assessments that provide them with useful information
about their students and their instruction?
Assessments must have both formative (ongoing) and summative (final) components
Students need multiple kinds of assessments
Assessments should be fair and equitable
People other than teachers should be included in the assessment process
High quality assessment uses multiple types of texts, incorporates a variety of strategies
and processes, and allows for a variety of responses
Students should be involved in constructing assessments
What do classroom teachers need to know about standardized testing?
Teachers must help students to perform well, help parents and students to understand the
tests, and effect changes in assessments as needed.
1. Helping students to perform well on the tests.
Teaching skills with a variety of approaches
Integrating test preparation into all instruction
Making connections across instruction, curriculum, and life

2. Teaching learning and test-taking strategies explicitly
Encouraging creative thinking
Fostering collaboration
2. Helping students and parents to understand the tests.
Teachers should become thoroughly familiar with the tests and how the results are
reported.
Parents and students need to know and understand tests scores.
Parents and students should know exactly what sections of test students passed or
failed. They also need to know the specific connection among scores on the high-
stakes test, retention, and graduation.
3. Effective change in assessment. Teachers must wrestle with ethical issues of high-stakes
testing and determine their own personal stance.
What advantages can authentic assessments offer teachers and students?
With authentic assessment, the focus is on learning. Authentic assessment leads to reflective
instruction, which helps students to develop meaning.
To guide decisions about assessment procedures teachers should ask the following questions:
Why are we testing or assessing?
What information are we gathering?
What is it we want students to be able to do?
Why should students be expected to know and use this material?
How will this information direct instruction?
How will this information influence students to make decisions about their own
learning?
How can we communicate the information and instructional decisions to all of the
stakeholders?
Any learning activity can be restructured as an authentic assessment of student work.
Designing authentic assessment requires several steps.
1. Thinking about what processes, strategies, or skills students are expected to
demonstrate.
2. Devising the actual performance task.
3. Developing the criteria and a scoring procedure.
4. The performance task itself and its evaluation by multiple evaluators.

3. Four examples of authentic assessments of student learning: technology to show mastery,
visual demonstrations of mastery, oral demonstrations of mastery, and portfolios.
Managing the Grading Load
To make grading less time consuming, yet informative for students teachers should consider
these suggestions:
Focus grading—Rather than marking every error in a written assignment, focus on one
element at a time.
Monday for comments—Give comments first and grades later so that the students who
value comments will have a chance to see them. Students who do not value comments
receive just a grade.
Code sheets—Use code for common errors.
Alternative evaluators—Use parents, community volunteers, older students, or a panel
of community members
Writing conferences—Should be personal, pointed, and positive
Holistic scoring with rubrics—Students know the expectations for the assignment, and
teachers evaluate assignments with clear criteria in mind.