Assessment Policy Essay

Introduction

Assessment is an integral component of instruction and learning and it is an important source of reflection for students, teachers and parents. It is the central element of learning and the compass that guide students toward learning and academic achievement. It is essential to allow individuals to get the educational support they need to succeed and to ensure the effectiveness of different educational methods as well as to see if education budgets are being spent effectively (Mansell & James, 2009). Nitko and Brookhart (2011, pg. 3), define assessment as ‘a process for obtaining information for making a particular educational decision’. Black and William (1998) define assessment broadly as a set of activities that teachers and students undertake to get information that can be used diagnostically to alter teaching and learning to meet student needs.

This paper aims to provide an overview of P-12 assessment policy of Queensland Studies Authority (QSA). This assessment policy will be examined in relation to how it reflects purposes of assessment, summative and formative assessment, and moderation of assessment instruments in teaching. This evaluation of QSA policy will also be compared and justified in the light of current literature on these aspects discussed.

Essay Prompt:

Examine an assessment policy at school/tertiary/national level in relation to how it reflects assessment purposes, formative and summative assessment and moderation of assessment instruments.

Summary of Queensland Assessment Policy

The Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) defines assessment as “the purposeful and systematic collection of information about students’ achievements”. The policy is introduced with a statement describing the main aims of QSA and how they will be achieved. It explains the duties of QSA in different assessment programs from school-based to external and national assessments. It is clearly explained in regard to different grades in P-12. Furthermore, the policy highlights the teachers and their responsibilities in designing high quality assessment tasks for school-based assessments and how they facilitate teachers in ensuring that these assessments are produced in high quality.

In addition, this policy highlights a framework of many principles of assessment implemented in it and in the reporting procedures. It emphasizes that learning goals should be matched with assessment tasks. Moreover, it stresses that these assessment tasks are significant to teaching and learning process and caters leaning for diversity groups, making judgements based on standards. Moreover, the policy focuses on summative and formative assessment and emphasizes on importance of justifying student evaluation against standards and reporting students’ achievement to stakeholders.

The procedures and measures to be taken when the results are disclosed to public are stressed in the policy as well. Some of them are modification of assessment tools, student evaluation based on standards stated, record keeping of their achievement, giving feedback to teachers and syllabus makers and modification of teachers’ judgements of standards. In addition to these, the QSA has standards in ensuring the equivalence of these through social moderation process across Queensland when teachers meet to discuss equivalence of standards across different schools. Further, the requirements of an effective social moderation process are also clearly described.

The P-12 policy of QSA policy discusses the importance of improving and advancing assessment competencies and practices continuously and revising the resources and techniques used. They highlight the importance of professional development of QSA staff who works in the area and members of moderation board, ensuring that consistent assessment taxonomy across the different phases of learning.

The last part of QSA assessment policy states the importance of assisting teachers in all levels of P-12 in effectively planning and implementing the assessment tasks, evaluating and reporting the assessments by providing professional development to teachers by providing them with opportunities to discuss in debates about assessment issues and facilitating them with relevant examples.

Examining QSA assessment policy

The QSA policy is examined in terms of how the purposes of assessment are reflected in the policy, how formative and summative assessments are used and how it reflects moderation of assessments.

Purposes of Assessment

Assessment serves many purposes in an educational setting such as motivating the students, accountability of learning, monitoring and certifying learning, giving feedback  and creating opportunities to improve learning (Black & William, 1998). Assessment of school learning provides information to help educators, policy makers, students, and parents make decisions. Black (1998) discussed three major purposes of assessment, which are to support learning, certify progress and transfer, and accountability. Enhancing and assisting student learning is the most important purpose of assessment. Assessments are used to check students’ understanding of the learning outcomes during instruction and at the end of a unit of work or term (Butler &McMunn, 2006). Moreover, assessment provides specific information about students’ strengths and difficulties in learning (Pellegrino, Chudowsky & Glaser, 2003). Accountability is essentially a regulatory process, designed to assure institutional conformity to specified norms. When students are assessed, the teachers and the schools are accountable for their learning (Lee & Caldwell, 2011). Another important purpose of assessment is to evaluate programs and certify learning. Moreover, Airasian (2005) identifies many other purposes of assessment such as establishing classroom equilibrium, providing feedback and planning and conducting instruction. These purposes identified by (Black, 1998; Butler &McMunn, 2006 and Airasian, 2005) are in coherence with the purposes reflected in the QSA P-12 assessment policy. Similar to the scholar’s explanation of assessment purposes, the QSA uses assessment to enhance, inform student learning and to provide information to the concerned authorities. These purposes highlighted in the QSA policy are of great importance and will help to reach the main objectives of assessment.

Summative and Formative Assessment

In general, assessment can be divided into two types: formative and summative assessment. They are both widely used in all educational settings. Summative assessment or more often now referred to as Assessment of Learning is the process that concerns final evaluation to make judgements on whether the students met their learning goals (Earl, 2003). Typically the summative evaluation concentrates on learner outcomes rather than only the program of instruction. It is a means to determine a student’s mastery and understanding of information, skills, concepts, or processes (Garrison & Ehringhaus, 1999). These tests are given at the end of each instructional period, such as midterm and final exams (Bloom, Hastings, & Madaus, 1971). Hence, it serves the purpose of grading and verifying the effectiveness of the curriculum.

Formative assessment or Assessment for Learning focuses on what the learner knows, understands or can do rather than whether the learner knows, understand or can do a predetermined thing (Hattie, 2003). It is defined as the process of seeking and interpreting  evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go next, and how best to get them there (Broadfoot, Daugherty, Gardner, Harlen, James, & Stobart, 2002). It Involves systematic measurement of students’ progress in the classroom and provides timely feedback to both the students and the instructor in order to guide their learning and teaching strategies toward successful completion of the course.

The QSA policy identifies the summative use of assessment. This assessment method has a long history in education. Summative assessments are cumulative evaluations used to measure student growth after instruction and are generally given at the end of a course in order to determine whether long term learning goals have been met (Earl, 2003). This assessment method is used to assess the quantity and accuracy of student work and a strong emphasis is placed upon comparing students and unlike the formative assessment, the feedback to students comes in the form of marks or grades with almost no direction or advice for improvement (Earl, 2003). Likewise, the intention of using summative assessment in the QSA policy is for the purpose of certifying and evaluating students against standards at different phases of assessment and to report students’ place in terms of learning outcomes and other students in the classroom, in classroom-based assessment, and in relation to national standards or state-wide standards in national and state-wide tests.  Hence, in coherence to actual purpose of summative assessment, the QSA assessment policy uses summative assessment for reporting and certifying.

The QSA assessment policy emphasizes the use of formative assessment to enhance student learning to help them attain higher levels of performance. As Nitko and Brookhart (2011) explain, the main purpose of formative assessment in QSA assessment policy is to guide and monitor student learning while it is still in progress and enhance student learning. It helps the teacher to know students’ existing ideas and skills, allowing teacher to recognize the point reached in development and the necessary next step to take in the teaching and learning process (Sadler (1989). Moreover, the teachers need to let the students know what their learning goals are and allow them to monitor the quality of what is being produced during the learning process and to draw on a range of strategies to close any gap between their performance and the standard they are aiming for (Harlen& James, 1997).
One crucial element in formative assessment is to provide qualitative feedback as it fosters student learning (Knight, 2003). Feedback is essential as it helps student to clarify goal, provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance, delivers information on learning, encourage teacher and peer dialogue and encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem (Juwah, Macfarlane-Dick, Matther, Nicol, D., Ross, & Smith, 2004; Nitko & Brookhart, 2011). Even though the QSA policy uses formative assessment in accordance with the above scholars, giving feedback, the procedures and the standards to follow has been omitted from the policy which is a huge drawback for the policy. However, this policy emphasizes for a balance and equity in use of both summative and formative assessment procedures.

Moderation of Assessment

Moderation of assessment tasks are widely used in schools to increase the reliability of assessments as well as teacher based judgements. Moderating the assessment task is vital to match the students’ learning needs. The main objective of moderating the assessment task is to reduce the variations in the ways teachers assess students and set marks so equity of student assessment is improved (Gilmore, Santiago & Sammons, 2012). The moderation should be used along with proper guidelines for assessing students’ learning objectives. Teachers should be provided with exemplars of student work to illustrate achievement at different levels of marks (Wilson, 2004). Moreover, moderation is also considered a key mechanism of professional development for teachers in school-based assessment. Modifying the tasks between teachers in a school is the platform for a shared understanding of the assessment program and moderation across schools further broadens this understanding (Gilmore, et al., 2012), hence, allowing for more consistent judgements on student performance.

The QSA assessment policy identifies moderation of assessment as something that facilitates student achievement. The policy outlines the above discussed moderation procedures of  providing teachers with exemplar models and teachers meeting together within school, or within state to ensure that judgements of standards are comparable from school to school through process of discussion and negotiation. Hence, the QSA assessment policy follows the moderation process of the assessment instruments as the above scholars have described.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the QSA P–12 assessment policy maps the necessary considerations for Queensland state schools in planning and implementing their curriculum from Prep to Year 12.  It sets out clear system-level requirements, expectations and principles of teaching and learning. This policy clearly reflects the major purposes of assessment and emphasizes on using formative and summative assessment, as well as moderation of assessment instruments for effective student learning. Moreover, this policy outlines the challenges faced to schools to generate excellence and equity in student learning outcomes and acknowledges the teacher’s critical role in delivering the best possible learning outcomes for every student.

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References

Airasian, P. W. (2005). Classroom assessment: Concepts and applications (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Black, P. J. (1998). Testing: Friend or Foe? Theory and practice of assessment and testing. London: Falmer Press.                        

Bloom, B. S., Hastings, J. T., & Madaus, G. F. (1971). Handbook on the formative and summative evaluation of student learning. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Broadfoot, P., Daugherty, R., Gardner, J., Harlen, W., James, M., & Stobart, G. (2002). Assessment for learning research based principles. Assessment Reform Group. Retrieved from http://www.unikoeln.de/hf/konstrukt/didaktik/benotung/assessment_basis.pdf

Earl, L. M. (2003). Assessment as learning: using classroom assessment to maximse student learning. Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin Press.

Garrison, C., & Ehringhaus, M. (1999). Formative and summative assessment in the classroom. Association for Middle Level Education. Retrieved from http://www.amle.org/portals/0/pdf/publications/Web_Exclusive/Formative_Summative_Assessment.pdf

Gilmore, A., Santiago, P., & Sammons, P. (2012). OECD reviews of evaluation and   assessment in education. Czech Republic: OECD Publishing.

Harlen, W., & James, M. (1997). Assessment and learning: differences and relationships between formative and summative assessment. Assessment in Education, 4(3), 365.

Hattie, J. (2003). Formative and summative interpretations of assessment information. Aukland: The University of Aukland.

Juwah, C., Macfarlane-Dick, D., Matther, B., Nicol, D., Ross, D., & Smith, B. (2004). Enhancing student learning through effective formative feedback. The Higher Education Academy.

Lee, J. c.-K., & Caldwell, B. J. (2011). Changing schools in an era of globalisation. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Mansell, W., & James, M. (2009). Assessment in schools, Fit for purposes? A commentary by the teaching and learning research program.

Newton, P. E. (2007). Clarifying the purposes of educational assessment.Assessment in Education, 14(2), 149-170.

Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (2003).Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment: National Academic Press.

Sadler, D.R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18, 119-144.

Wilson, M. (2004). Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability.     Chicago: Chicago University Press.