Many companies are now selling quarterly or more frequent benchmarking of the students. The companies make it sound like the benchmarking will solve the educational woes of teachers and schools. I agree that benchmarking can provide a valuable summative assessment of the student. Unless the benchmark specifies what the student can do to improve than the benchmark is summative, not formative. The teachers have to spend time going through the data to figure out what each student needs. If a school’s solution is for a computer program to diagnose and then give formative feedback (i.e. have the student do certain activities which the benchmark happens to provide), I wonder what the role of a teacher becomes. Do teachers in such environments simply become managers instead of instructional classroom leaders? Does all their expertize get thrown away since the computer program does it all? Teachers could be working with small groups of students but then the benchmarking program would not have that information to keep track of students’ progress. How do teachers integrate these benchmarks into their class?
Posts Tagged 'Quarterly'
Quarterly Benchmarks Programs and the Role of Teachers
Published March 14, 2008 Accountability , Assess , Assessment , assessment for learning , Assessment of learning , Benchmark , benchmarks , Formative , Formative assessment , formative feedback , Summative , Teacher , Teachers Leave a CommentTags: Assess, Assessment, Benchmark, Class, Education, Formative, Formative assessment, Quarterly, Summative, Teacher
