SOCIETY HAS SEEN fit to redefine the role of its schools. No longer are they to be places that merely sort and rank students according to their achievement. Now, they are to be places where all students become competent, where all students meet pre-specified standards and so are not left behind. With increasing intensity, policy makers are turning to assessment as the power tool that will compel schools to fulfill this new role. If we look closely at the union of this redefined mission and the growing reliance on assessment, we can find a surprising and immensely powerful way to use assessment in the development of effective schools. Traditionally, schools have used assessment--the pending final exam, the unannounced pop quiz, and the threat of low or failing report card grades--to motivate students. To maximize learning, our teachers believed, maximize anxiety. Assessment has served as the great intimidator. Pressure to get high test scores and good grades, it was believed, would motivate greater effort and thus more learning. The recent change in the mission of schools has clouded this traditional view of the relationship between assessment and motivation. To see how and why, we must explore our assessment legacy and its motivational intricacies. As you will see, through that retrospective, we will discover a far more productive way for assessment to help students succeed. THE OLD MISSION AND ITS LEGACY Today's adults grew up in schools designed to sort us into the various segments of our social and economic system. The amount of time available to learn was fixed: one year per grade. The amount learned by the end of that time was free to vary: some of us learned a great deal; some, very little. As we advanced through the grades, those who had learned a great deal in previous grades continued to build on those foundations. Those who had failed to master the early prerequisites within the allotted time failed to learn that which followed. After 12 or 13 years of cumulative treatment of this kind, we were, in effect, spread along an achievement continuum that was ultimately reflected in each student's rank in class upon graduation. From the very earliest grades, some students learned a great deal very quickly and consistently scored high on assessments. The emotional effect of this was to help them to see themselves as capable learners, and so these students became increasingly confident in school. That confidence gave them the inner emotional strength to take the risk of striving for more success because they believed that success was within their reach. Driven forward by this optimism, these students continued to try hard, and that effort continued to result in success for them. They became the academic and emotional winners. Notice that the trigger for their emotional strength and their learning success was their perception of their success on formal and informal assessments. But there were other students who didn't fare so well. They scored very low on tests, beginning in the earliest grades. The emotional effect was to cause them to question their own capabilities as learners. They began to lose confidence, which, in turn, deprived them of the emotional reserves needed to continue to take risks. Public failure was embarrassing, and it seemed better not to try and thus to save face. As their motivation waned, of course, their performance plummeted. These students embarked on what they believed to be an irreversible slide toward inevitable failure and lost hope. Once again, the emotional trigger for their decision not to try was their perception of their performance on assessments. Consider the reality--indeed, the paradox--of the schools in which we were reared. If some students worked hard and learned a lot, that was a positive result, and they would finish high in the rank order. But if some students gave up in hopeless failure, that was an acceptable result, too, because they would occupy places very low in the rank order. …
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Apr 1, 2015
Mary C Clement 
Open Access