DELIMA, NORMA B. :What Do We Need To Do To Increase The Quality of Assessment for Learning?

Meeting 4 Article: What Do We Need To Do To Increase
The Quality of Assessment for Learning?

Things are not what they always seem to appear. We generally do things our way, and we usually think it is the best, but the truth is… there is always a better way.

People vary in their styles. This is also true with the teaching and learning. Teachers have different delivery styles, and the learners, likewise, have different ways of perceiving, understanding, and remembering the concepts.

What makes a man attracted to a woman basically is the physical feature. Similarly, one thing that could probably increase the quality of assessment for learning, is the learning atmosphere. Child Friendly Schools System as one of the programs of the Department of Education sees to it that the school, particularly the classroom environment, is really conducive for learning. It follows that the teachers should also be friendly, approachable, and committed, enough to inspire the students to come to school regularly and on time. Friendly inside and outside the school, during discussion is good, but not during examination. Allowing students to talk, copy each other’s work, sharing of answer, cheating, do not do any good for the assessment of learning. Students should learn to work independently especially during examinations. Certainly, this will help increase the quality of assessment of learning.

Understanding the three stages of learning also is needed to for the assessment for learning: input, integration, and output, as pointed out by Henry Tenedero. Inputs are the lessons, facts or information regarding the subject matter that the teacher gives to the students. Integration is the process of associating or relating the lessons to the lives of the students. And output is the desired results in the form of written or oral examinations to quantify the students’ knowledge and understanding of the lessons, and that is assessment. When there is doubt on the part of the teacher as to whether or not the lesson is understood, the teacher should then have the reflective thinking.

Teachers should also check on the learning continuum if his subject matter is still a part of the learning competencies, and should then focus and spend more time on the least mastered ones. After evaluation, even without item analysis, by merely letting students who did not score at least half of the items to honestly raise their hands, we can assess if there is a need to re-teach the lesson. The class average scores actually give us the sign to reflect, enhance, and improve the teaching of the lesson. It serves as an indicator on deciding whether to look back or to look forward.

We do not see much problem on classroom level assessment. However, when the assessment comes up to a higher level, with the result that is said to be ranked, there exist then some manipulations in the result. And the “authentic result” is not revealed anymore. I think one important thing that we need to do then to increase the quality of assessment for learning, is to reveal the authentic assessment result. Let us stop manipulating the result of the assessment. Let us stop cheating. Stop coaching students. Let us give justice to the thousands or millions of pesos spent for the papers and preparations for the assessment. The huge budget of the department is actually useless if it does not serve the purpose.

Another thing perhaps is that assessment result in the higher level should not be ranked, so that there is no need for schools to compete among themselves, which is the main cause of cheating.

One advantage of being in the private institution is that they can opt not to take part in the National Achievement Test. One wrote a comment in the internet that it only gives them dismal feeling when they see their school at the bottom rank and they think that the low school performance cannot compensate the high tuition fees they are paying to the school. But in the public, there is no exemption from taking such test.

Let us just hope that the honesty and integrity of the classroom level assessment of learning, would be true not only in the classroom level but up to the higher level. If this happens, teachers would surely be serving the learners with more enthusiasm, for there will only be a real friendly mostly academic competition, in the classroom, in school, in division, region, and even in the national level.