Grant Wiggins on Assessment
Instructor Magazine
October 1995
All the talk about changing the way we measure student progress raises important
questions. How do you design reliable assessments? Should you “teach to”
standardized tests? How can you evaluate an individual performance on a cooperative
project? To get answers, Instructor Senior Editor Meg Bozzone interviewed assessment
expert Grant Wiggins, president of the nonprofit Center on Learning Assessment and
School Structure (CLASS)
What’s the difference between assessment and grading?
When teachers assess student performance; they’re not placing value or judgment on it–
that’s evaluating or grading. They’re simply reporting a student’s profile of achievement.
What’s a “profile of achievement”?
It’s like a baseball card that lists the batting average, runs batted in, and other data about a
player without placing a value on performance. In order to evaluate a player’s performance,
you must factor in other information, such as: Is the player a rookie who has a low batting
average in general, but a high average for a rookie? Therefore, for student performance you
report about such things as absolute achievement, relative progress, scores for specific
writing skills (not writing as a whole), and so on.
Should teachers trade in their traditional assessment methods for profiles of achievement?
It’s not “Yeah, portfolios! Boo, multiple choice!” or any other either/or choice. Good
assessment is about expanding the assessment repertoire because no single form is sufficient.
There are reliability and validity problems with each. Every method has its strengths and
weaknesses, and its place.
Are parents comfortable with profiles of achievement?
Parents at schools that have switched from report cards to narratives often say, “This is
great, but how is Johnny doing?” I’m sympathetic to them and return to the baseball-card
analogy: I don’t know how to judge the value of a batting average of 280 unless I have some
comparative information. It may turn out that hitting three out of ten, which sounds poor,
would land a player in the majors.
In schools, teachers should report the profile of achievement and compare students to
standards or norms. For example, a student in a second-grade class may be a year younger
than classmates and therefore less experienced. There is no reason to compare this child flat
out with others with no qualifying language or context of expectations. At the same time,
teachers should report, for example, that a child who may not be a strong writer for his age
has made progress in attitude and with some writing skills.
What are ways of putting students’ performance in context?
Many schools report performance on a novice-expert continuum. Teachers draw up a rubric
that describes what a student should have mastered from the novice to the expert level, with
steps delineated and explained along the way. Teachers then put students’ learning into
context. They can point out to parents, for example, “Here’s where we placed your child on
this continuum. The evidence we used to support our assessment will help you see why.”
The same rubric also can be used to report individual progress. Teachers can say, for
example, “Relative to other five-year-olds, your child is still behind. But, as you can see from
the last assessment she has made gains and we’re happy with that progress.”
How can teachers expand their assessment repertoire?
Begin where you know you have a mismatch between an outcome you value and the way
you now assess it. For example, if you know your 20-question multiple-choice quiz on the
Civil War is inadequate, experiment with adding another type of assessment that’s rich and
interesting. What have you got to lose? You’re not tossing out the test. You’re finding a way
to fill in a gap. Also, give students scoring rubrics and other insight into what criteria is
applied to assessment–secrecy should be minimal–and have kids practice peer review. Self-
assessment and self-adjustment are at the heart of better performance.
How will teachers know if an assessment is reliable?
There is a big difference between a neat activity and valid assessment, and not all assessment
is hands-on. Teachers need to design assessments backward from the task, asking at each
step of the way “What’s the evidence I need of children’s understanding? Will this
assessment get at it?” For example, if you’re considering using a diorama of the Civil War as
an assessment, ask, “Could students do the diorama but not understand the Civil War?
Could students not do the diorama well but understand the Civil War?” The answer to both
is yes, so it’s a good idea to either rethink using the diorama as assessment or use other types
of assessments, such as oral presentations, in conjunction with it.
What about assessing cooperative projects?
May parents worry about this because they want to know the specifics of their child’s
performance. I’m sympathetic to that, and again return to the sports analogy: Your team can
lose ten games in a row, but the data for your best player still stands and vice versa. So
teachers need to find assessments–such as presentations by each student on an aspect of a
collective project–that pull out information about each child.
If a school’s policy is to give letter grades only, what can an individual teacher do?
There’s nothing to prevent teachers from expanding their modes of assessment while still
living in a letter-grade world. Assessment reform is about getting different and richer
information about students’ performance, all of which teachers can factor into a grade. It’s a
matter of expanding your pile of evidence, not necessarily changing the grading system.
Where does standardized testing fit in with assessment?
Many teachers think that they have to teach worse in order for their students to get better
scores on standardized tests. Not true. The tests are usually simplistic and generic, so if
teachers have a rigorous local curriculum and assessment system, their students should do
very well. The test designers aren’t interested in teaching through the test–all they’re trying to
do is find the quickest and easiest way of getting at some basic information. Teachers’
standards should be much higher than the test designers’ standards, which are minimal.
If you want to know more:
Contact CLASS, 648 The Great Road,
Princeton, NJ 08540; (609) 252-1211;
e-mail: classnj@aol.com.
If you want to read a student’s summary and critique of Wiggins’ comments:
http://westy.jtwn.k12.pa.us/users/sja/RE1.html
To examine this issue further:
Critical Issue: Rethinking Assessment and Its Role in Supporting Educational
Reform
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as700.htm
Critical Issue: Reporting Assessment Results
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/assment/as600.htm