LING 612-Dr. Coles-Ritchie

Pierce, V. (2006). Assessment and evaluation. In Ovando, C.J., Combs, M.C. & Collier, V. (Eds) Bilingual and ESL Classrooms, (pp.305-357). Boston: McGraw Hill.

My overall impression of this article is that it is a little summary of President Bush's NCLB act of 2001. This article begins with school and assessments at the National level then begins to break down the effects to the state and local levels. How this article influences me and my students is by providing useful guidelines such as the Guidelines For Teachers found on page 315. The one item in this chart I found helpful is #2 in the appropriate test uses states that tests are not perfect, nor are they exact measure of student learning. Therefore, no single test score can be considered a clear measure of a student's knowledge. This is where I as a teacher and researcher would triangulate knowledge using different modes of data gathering techniques. Another useful chart is found on page 348 where a list of common standardized key words are outlined. I would like to share this information with my co-workers so they can focus on how to ask and familiarize their learners using this methodology. The last item I found especially useful is found on page 353 the Guidelines For Teachers and Getting Started. This makes me rethink how I have set up my room. I am now rethinking how I can tweak my own classroom to make it assessment friendly scheduling activities where I would be able to assess and gather data within the daily schedule and make it routine. Assessment should not be something isolated otherwise students results may be invalid , but part of the learning process so that data can show a better and valid representation of their true abilities.
There is one thing I would like to address with my school here and that is to form cohesive staff development training so that we can hear what works and what doesn't. So far this is a need in our site. It would be nice for the staff to work more together and synthesize so that students can be placed in efficient and effective programs based on their needs.
One surprising information from this article is that withing the U.S. there are only 2 states that require project portfolios and writing samples as part of their assessment process. I have developed generic idea of what assessment is and that it is usually multiple and true/false paper and pencil assessment. This is a deficient idea and I am thinking of having my students create portfolios complete with writing samples.
In closing what I take away from this article is to rethink and restructure my own classroom so that I can create instances throughout the week for assessment so that students are not surprised but more comfortable about the process. The other idea I want to implement is using portfolios so that parents can see the process and progress of their child.