Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Same Formative and Summative Assessments for All Teachers With the growing concerns of the new End of Course testing requirements, administrators and the Instructional Lead Teacher at a high school have proposed that all teachers of the same grade level and content area must have the same formative and summative assessments. Their grade books will have to match regarding the titles of the assessments (daily and test grades). The Math teachers are concerned, but they know that this can be worked out. The English Language Arts teachers are the most concerned, because this takes the art of teaching away from them. The ELA teachers have common Unit Tests that are given every 4.5 weeks; however, their other assessment grades (vocabulary tests/quizzes, the short pieces of literature they read, and the activities they create for the literature) are different. The ELA teachers believe that they should be able to have the ability to create lessons, activities, and assessments that suit their teaching style and their students' learning styles. Is the freedom of their craft being taken away? How should these teachers address their concerns? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) As an ELA teacher who receives common assessments, I definitely believe that they take the craft and fun out of teaching. It's almost as if we aren't being trusted with the knowledge we possess to teach our kids what they need to know. I am able to make short quizzes such as vocabulary quizzes and tickets out the door, but I am not able to make end of course tests or summative assessments to close out a unit. Another aspect of this is the common assessments are on grade level and not differentiated to meet the needs of each student. As a result, the scores for these assessments are never high across the board. As far as addressing the matter; there is really no way for teachers to address this. The state mandated assessments are always on grade level, not teacher made, and sometimes not even aligned correctly. Maybe the coaches who design the common assessments could ask for input from the teachers, but that would take a lot of time in creating each test to fit each child's needs.