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Have you ever reflected on your assessment and evaluation practice within your classroom? If not, pause for a moment and consider the range of assessments you use within your classroom setting and ask why you are doing what you are doing. A few years ago, I reflected deeply on my own assessment and evaluation practice, which resulted in significant changes to my teaching. Based on my reflection and subsequent learning, I reevaluated the alignment of assessments to my intended learning outcomes in coursework, moved to a competency-based evaluation practice, and promoted mastery learning with my students in a more productive way. A bonus is that I was able to use my very limited time more effectively and efficiently. Below are three tips that can be used across all classrooms and learning contexts.

Tip 1: The Big “A-word”: Alignment

The first question to ask is if your assessment and evaluation tools “align” to your intended learning outcomes. The data you collect in your classroom should be aligned to your learning outcomes. If you use assessments that evaluate content or skills beyond your learning outcomes, you must ask yourself why you continue to use a given assessment and/or evaluation tool. For example, you might have a learning outcome, “Students will solve two-step word problems.” Your assessments and evaluation tools (like checklists or rubrics) should address students’ ability to solve two-step word problems. If you have a line on an evaluation tool for “writing in complete sentences,” it is worth reconsidering if this is the time, place, and purpose of the assessment.

In aligning your assessments to learning outcomes, you can plan instructional activities to lead students toward mastery of those outcomes (Wiggins, 2005). You can take data you collect from your battery of formative and summative assessment opportunities and use it to drive your instructional planning, meeting students where they are and differentiate learning needs based on data. For example, you might have a learning outcome of “Students will construct a model to represent the rotation and revolution of the Sun-Earth-Moon (SEM) system.” Formative assessment data might reveal that several students are struggling to differentiate between rotation and revolution; some students are on track with terminology and are ready to construct a model, while other students have constructed a model, used it to demonstrate the rotation and revolution mechanics of the SEM system and are ready to move on to something new.

You can differentiate instruction, aligned to the learning outcome of each group, by meeting them where they are and moving them forward – even those who are ready to dig deeper into the concepts associated with the outcome! A bonus of doing this is that you can maximize your time spent in planning, making the entire instructional cycle more focused, efficient, and cohesive!

Tip 2: “Grades”

What’s in a grade? The research is quite clear that educators and researchers hold many different views on what should be reflected in a “grade” (Brookhart, 2011; Knight and Cooper, 2019; Percell and Meyer, 2021). The traditional approach to a grading system is based on points, percentages, and/or letters. In using this traditional system, many behaviors, skills, and content knowledge items are conglomerated to derive a “grade,” sometimes resulting in a lack of true understanding of what that “grade” means. For example, turning in work on time, positive behavior, and the teacher’s perception of “effort” are often calculated as part of a “grade,” which can further inflate or deflate an overarching weighted grade (Nilson, 2015).

Try a competency-based or standards-based approach to grading, where your assessment and evaluation practice connects explicitly to learning outcomes, excluding unrelated factors. For example, if you have a learning outcome, “Students will ask and answer questions about literary texts,” you might have a graphic organizer assessment in which students answer questions about characters, settings, and major events in a story, then write one question they still have about the text.

You could use a simple checklist to help you track the development of competencies, such as:

The grade, then, becomes reflective of the learning demonstrated in a particular subject area. In addition, it excludes overt evaluation of timeliness, behavior, and the very subjective concept of “effort.” By reducing the extraneous factors as much as possible, a student’s grade becomes much more reflective of the actual learning and performance in a class as pertinent to learning outcomes.

In keeping with the idea that there are many perspectives on what “grades” represent, always talk to your administrator(s) before making any significant changes that might involve school and system policies. Latitude in calculating grades for reporting (e.g., transcripts, report cards, etc.) varies wildly between schools and systems, where some teachers have more freedom and flexibility than others. If you ever have any questions about what you are allowed to do, talk to your administrator(s)!

Tip 3: Mastery Learning

How does assessment and evaluation promote learning? Perhaps the greatest role our assessment and evaluation practice should play in the classroom is that of promoting mastery learning. We should be assessing and evaluating meaningful competencies related to our learning outcomes because we want our students to be able to transfer content knowledge and skills to the world beyond the walls of the classroom.

We know that mastery learning is messy; it’s frequently not “one and done” and multiple chances to practice are required for us to truly learn. For example, when Erin was in her doctoral program, she really struggled with a particular statistics concept and spent over 40 hours one week working on that content and assignment. After receiving feedback from her professor, she was able to use the actionable feedback to revise and resubmit the assignment, demonstrating learning and growth from the experience. It wasn’t a situation of “this is graded and now we move on.” Her professor valued mastery learning over a “grade.” Consider an area of struggle for you – and how many times it took (or is still taking) you to understand and practice something effectively. This will apply to your students, too!

Therefore, we must provide a venue for students to have multiple opportunities to practice skills as needed (Walton and Yeager, 2020). This does not mean students merely redo work until it meets minimum proficiency; it means additional learning opportunities as part of an instructional sequence. In doing so, students truly learn and develop content knowledge and skills associated with our teaching, which should be the goal of every educator, everywhere. 

Conclusion

To close, assessment and evaluation practices have tremendous implications on learning within the classroom. Taking time to reflect upon your own practice can provide you with necessary insight to improve upon your planning and implementation of assessment and evaluation, rendering it more deliberate or purposeful. Developing a deep understanding of your learning outcomes, coupled with a purposeful alignment of assessment and evaluation opportunities to those outcomes, can render your data much more valuable. Your “grades” then become much more reflective of your learning outcomes. Additionally, the focus of assessment moves to mastery learning as opposed to a one-and-done “grade.” Assessment becomes much more purposeful and meaningful for you – and your students!

Brookhart, Susan M. 2011. Starting the Conversation about Grading. Educational Leadership 69, no. 3, 10-14. https://ascd.org/el/articles/starting-the-conversation-about-grading

Knight, Megan and Robyn Cooper. 2019. Taking on a New Grading System: The Interconnected Effects of Standards-Based Grading on Teaching, Learning, Assessment, and Student Behavior. NASSP Bulletin 103, no. 1: 65-92.

Nilson, Linda. 2015. Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time. Stylus.

Percell, Jay C. and Barbara B. Meyer. 2021. Resolutions for a New Paradigm: Addressing Common Issues in Standards-Based Grading. Kappa Delta Pi Record 57, no. 4: 185-190.

Walton, Gregory M. and David S. Yeager. 2020. Seed and Soil: Psychological Affordances in Contexts Help to Explain Where Wise Interventions Succeed or Fail. Psychological Science 29, no. 3: 219-323.

Wiggins, Grant. and Jay McTighe. 2005. Understanding by Design. ASCD.

	Dr. Klash is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at Auburn University at Montgomery.  Research interests include effective instructional strategies and assessment practices educators use to facilitate positive, engaging, challenging, and motivational learning environments in K-12 and higher education classrooms.
	Tara L.R. Beziat is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Auburn University at Montgomery. Her research focuses on metacognition and its effects on teaching, learning and assessment. More recently, her focus has been on helping college science faculty make changes to their teaching and assessment that lead to significant gains in learning while improving faculty morale. She is currently a consulting editor for Teaching of Psychology.
	Shelly Hudson Bowden is a Professor at Auburn University at Montgomery.  She teaches Ed.S. courses and values authentic teaching and learning classrooms.
	Since the fall, 2011, Dr. Gil Dueñas has served as a faculty member in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Technology, College of Education, Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM). As a Full Professor, he provides instruction (face-to face or online) for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral candidates, as well as facilitates 10-hour field experiences, 100-hour practicum, and the one-semester internship for eligible candidates. His research focus centers on the influence of the Hispanic household on children’s out-of-school mathematics and literacy learning, and on the role of pedagogical practices that acknowledge and value young children’s cultural diversity. Prior to his current duty at AUM, he served as a third-grade teacher at a local Title I public school for 7.5 years and completed a 30-year military career in the United States Air Force. He is married and both he and his wife have one daughter who is in the United States Air Force and stationed with her husband at the U. S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
	Samantha Junkin is an Assistant Professor at the College of Education at Auburn University in Montgomery. Research interests include instructional strategies for engagement, motivation, and student success.