Rethinking Literacy Assessment: How Student Self-Evaluation Transforms Learning

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

If there would be any positive outcome from the current administration’s attempt to dismantle the Department of Education, the end of standardized testing could be a net positive for public education.

One study found that the mere presence of standardized testing, paired with accountability measures, can inhibit educator’s willingness to innovate in their classrooms in the name of improving instruction for students.

I witnessed this while coaching a secondary ELA teacher. Our focus was on developing an interim assessment she could use three times a year to evaluate her students’ ability to take a journal entry from an idea to a publish-ready piece. Would the assessment drive instruction?

Struggles with Traditional Assessment

Previously, the teacher shared how powerful daily journaling was for her students. This teacher informs her students that she doesn’t read their journals unless they would like her to check out an entry. She recalled one student who wrote about her parents’ frequent fights at home. The student presented her journal to the teacher one day. “I want you to read what I recently wrote.” This led to communication with home about how the domestic issues were impacting the student’s emotional well being.

When I first heard this story, I almost wanted to dissuade the teacher from applying an interim assessment - essentially a summative assessment that monitors student progress over the course of a year - to her journaling practice. “I’d hate to see your students shy away from journaling if they know it may be evaluated.”

This led us to explore ways we could apply an interim assessment process in a way that augmented students’ journaling practice. While there were success stories, the teacher also lamented on how many students held an apathetic stance toward writing daily on whatever was on their mind. “How might assessment lead to developing more productive and reflective writers?” was our informal essential question within this coaching cycle.

Evaluating the Process of Writing

The teacher selected the following standard as the focus for the interim assessment:

W.9-10.1 Compose reflective, formal, and creative writing, which may happen simultaneously or independently, for a variety of high-stakes and low-stakes purposes.

After some back and forth of ideas, we decided to use A.I. to brainstorm possible assessment items. The results that came back were disappointing. Lots of multiple choice and poor differentiation between the correct and incorrect answers. We agreed that these suggestions were not a true test of student learning.

So we changed our direction: instead of selected or constructed response assessment items, we asked A.I. to generate a student-led performance task. It would ask students to:

• Review their journal entries from the past two weeks.

• Select one entry that they feel has potential for further development.

• Complete the planning sheet provided below.

In essence, the teacher was asking her students to engage in what many professional writers do: to tease out the diamonds in the rough, to become self-evaluators of their own writing in order to discern what calls to them while deciding what potential readers may find as quality prose.

Through the design process, we agreed that it would be reasonable to expect high school students to assess their own writing. This is a unique proposition. Too often, teachers feel they need to evaluate everything a student produces. But with some secondary teachers having at least 100 students on their caseload, they have to find ways to empower their kids to become leaders of their own learning.

The Benefits of Student-Led Assessment

Once we generated a process for the writing self-assessment, including a rubric students could use with some modeling, I asked the teacher how they were feeling about what was created.

“Good! I feel less stressed about the upcoming school year. I was worried about how many papers I would have to grade through this additional assessment process. But I can see how empowering my students to assess their own writing can free me up to prepare more responsive instruction once I learn where they feel they struggle.”

I also shared that I could see noticeable enthusiasm as she talked about this assessment process. “Teachers typically aren’t excited about ‘testing’ their students three times a year, yet you seem to be looking forward to it.” She nodded. I didn’t mention that when students are empowered to self-assess, the impact on learning has one of the highest effect sizes reported.

I want teachers to discover this for themselves.

Related Resources

• This teacher can engaged in professional development because of a supportive administrator. Check out my review of Improving Teacher Morale and Motivation (MiddleWeb) for more ideas on how best to recruit and retain educators.

• Related, I updated a previous post for an Edmentum article on the critical role of principals as literacy leaders. TL;DR: It’s difficult to enact schoolwide literacy success without positional leadership.

• Trusting teachers is at the core of effective instructional coaching. I devote a whole chapter (#3) in my most recent book to the importance of trust for supporting teaching and learning.