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One of the pitfalls of the current assessment reality is that it is often a one-size-fits-all model. A test that asks for written responses to questions is just one way of measuring progress. The other pitfalls is the data is imperfect and that there is a huge divide between standards, how we evaluate mastery of those standards (rubrics/ proficiency scales) and is everyone doing that with fidelity.

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Yes, educators need assessment but not just for the sake of seeing a score or grade. We need assessment because we need an independent way of verifying how well our students are doing across multiple standards and our students need that feedback reguarly. Without assessment, how can you know (at least with greater certainty) that your students actually learned the material?

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Assessment is used for all stakeholders to have a clear and concise set of data to determine how closei or how far a student is from achieving mastery of objectives. From that data, other points can be extrapolted such as the effectiveness of lessons or how instruction should be changed.

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Assessement is the different ways by which we as teachers determine the progress our students make in mastering and applying skills, knowledge and content based goals. It a sense it is a measure of how effective we were in helping our students with that mastery.

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Some pitfalls is following the script of the curriculum and teaching to the test.

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Yes, teachers need assessments so they can plan and identify the needs of their students.

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Assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information in order to develop a understanding of what students know and understand.

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Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met.

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My current assessment reality is that I don't spend enough time closely evaluating formative assessments. I also think that my summative assessment should be more varied and involve student choice more often.

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Yes, educators need assessments. Without assessments to guide instruction educators might spend valuable time on something students all ready know, or spending no time on a concept students understand very little.

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Assessment is used for guiding instruction and evaluating learning.

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Assessment is an evaluation of understanding.

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Some pitfalls include being pressured by administration to "teach to the test" while trying to engage students in tests that they don't really care about.

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Educators need assessments so they can identify what level of understanding our students are at. This will help us meet them there they are.

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Assessment is used to see if a student is proficient in a content area or not. It is essentially a map for teachers to use to see where his or her students are.

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Assessment is a way to measure student progress. Both students and teachers can benefit from the use of consistent and authentic assessment.

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The current assessment process continues to reinforce outdated standardization methods designed to circumvent equitable minority participation

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Right now because we do not meet the standards we have to do assessment throughout the year for the State. By the time we get to the Smarter Balance test in the Spring the students are burnt out.  We do not get to go over the results and analyze them despite our many PIR days. It seems to be just a checkbox for our administration with no real effort to improve.

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Yes, educators need assessments.  They help us to understand where the student is so we can help them move up to the next level of knowledge.

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To help the teacher find what the students know and do not know and to help fill in those gaps.

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Assessment is a tool to help the teacher measure the students progress.

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Yes. Language Culture and History teachers need tribally based assessment tools designed to measure value driven tribal subject matter that holds little relevance to the standard assessment practices currently employed in modern western acadamia

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an assessment is used to promote principles of tribal identity and values that aim to strengthen the social and academic capacity of native students in my class

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an assessment is a social and academic measure that gauges the understanding of my students knowledge of Chippewa Cree Language Culture and History

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Helping students to understand the importance/relevance of testing without over emphasizing or underemphasizing it at the same time. They certainly have a lot of assessments on so many levels between different curricula as well as at national and state levels. It's overwhelming for teachers as well as students.

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Yes, however, we need to understand it is not one size fits all. It is a tool to help us collect data and make adjustments and we have to understand that each student tests differently in different situations.

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Helps us, as educators, to gather data about progress which helps us determine where to go next, if the student is ready to progress at all.

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How you can get the information without devoting so much class time to testing.

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Educators need data and evidence to gauge their own effectiveness and assessments are one way that we can access that evidence. It's not a perfect system, though, and it's necessary to include both formative and summative assessments.

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I want students to "do work" because they value the opportunity to learn, not because it's a chance at an A. They will oftentimes ask how many points an assignment is worth; I want my assessments to be meaningful.

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Assessments help us recognize what to celebrate and what to prioritize moving forward.

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Absolutely. It gives us a picture of where students are and helps us adjust our instruction accordingly.

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People are so different in the way we taken in, as well as the way we put out information. So why are we all getting the same assessments?

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Assessment is used for collecting data so teachers can make data-based decisions about their assessment. It is also used to help teachers assess whether mastery of skills/learning targets has been achieved.

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Assessment is used as a means to collect data before, during, and after learning.

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I think so because it is a way to document progress at the beginning, middle, and end. I do think it can be very flexible and changing with teachers and students needs.

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Assessment is a complex and accurate picture of student understanding which bookends instruction. It is important to understand what they already know in order to understand what they have learned through the instruction. It also gives feedback to teachers about the effectiveness of instruction techniques using real data.

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Where to start a lesson or a unit. Also to see what the students already know or what they have retained.

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I recently had to opportunity to proctor an alternative ASVAB for a student who had limited formal schooling in English and her L1. The way that the questions were worded - things were being asked that I know she knew how to do, like figure the area of a room, but the questions were so ethereal she wanted to flip the desk rather than attempt to answer them - and I didn't blame her a bit.

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Assessment to me is a way to see where my students are and what step we need to take next. Also it is a way to see what my students have learned as well as a way they can communicate their thinking process.

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Assessments are critical - but I try to explain to our team that I am always assessing students to check for understanding, even when I am doing something like listening to them read out loud or listening to their responses. Multiple guess tests are a poor way to evaluate intelligence, need for accommodations, and learning.

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Assessments are used to check for understanding and to help prioritize goals for future learning.

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I used to think of assessment as a "them" thing, as in evaluating how much they have retained.  Then I came to think of assessment as a "me" thing, as in evaluating my job as a teacher.  These days I tend to think of assessment as a "we" thing for developing a plan - as in evaluating where the student is in order to work with the student to make a plan for where the student needs to get to.

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Some assessments are not directly linked to the instruction and learning, so they are misaligned and irrelevant. Some assessments are not user-friendly for all students so they don't accurately measure student knowledge. Current pitfalls also include inability to do more pre and formative assessments and that is what steers instruction... I'm assessing in the dark! ... back to misaligned and irrelevant!

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Some assessments are not directly linked to the instruction and learning, so they are misaligned and irrelevant. Some assessments are not user-friendly for all students so they don't accurately measure student knowledge. Current pitfalls also include inability to do more pre and formative assessments and that is what steers instruction... I'm assessing in the dark! ... back to misaligned and irrelevant!

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I think educators need assessments to guide instruction and to communicate with students about their learning. 

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I think educators need assessments to guide instruction and to communicate with students about their learning. 

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I do feel assessments are important and needed for educators, although I would propose that "assessments" in the traditional use of the word might not be the best way to evaluate our EL students, or the majority of students, actually. I know I don't do well with traditional testing, personally. I think creativity with assessments is a must, at this point, COVID aside.

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I think assessments are used for student and teacher accountability and to inform instruction.

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I think assessments are used for student and teacher accountability and to inform instruction.

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I would define assessment as tangible evidence of student learning.

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I would define assessment as tangible evidence of student learning.

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Welllll, assessments through this COVID process have been tricky. I came to the conclusion that the assessments I gave during that time had to be either opinion based, or involve questions that are specific to each individual student to avoid cheating and plagiarism.

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I think assessments are used as a measuring tape of sorts, to show the teacher what needs to be retaught, and what did and didn't exactly "stick."

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I would define assessment as a way to gauge how much and of what specific learning your students have obtained and retained after particular lessons and/or units have been taught.

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Our current assessments cause students a lot of stress, anxiety, and eat up a lot of class time that could be used to learn more.

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In a lot of ways, everything we do is an assessment, though some are more formal than others. Do we need them formally? I guess it depends on what the expectations are, but I have learned many things without being "assessed" and if learning is the goal, then maybe not.

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Assessments are used to figure out where we still have work to do.

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Assessments should tell us what a student has learned and how well we have taught.

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I feel that standardized assessments three time a year is excessive and takes away from time teachers can use for direct instruction. If you are always assessing, there is no time for learning.

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Educators need assessment to plan lessons, look for areas of weakness, and to gauge the effectiveness of a lesson.

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Assessments help teacher assess where students are at, what needs to be taught/retaught, and what instruction is working versus what instruction is not working.

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Assessments are used to determine student learning driving instruction.

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A collection of data to determine or evaluate student understanding/knowledge/proficiency levels which can help guide instructional goals.

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A pitfall of my current assessment reality is limitations on providing meaningful feedback in a timely manner.

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Educators need assessments so they can be better teachers for their students as individuals.

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Assessment is used to help a teacher understand a student's level of proficiency in a certain area, skill, learning goal.

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Assessing students at their level. Giving them the opportunity to pick how they want to show what they have learned.

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A tool used to understand a student's progress toward a learning goal.

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Educators should use assessments to help guide their instruction, not only use them to assess student learning.

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A tool used to evaluate student's understanding.

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Assessments are used to guide instruction and check students' understanding.

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It's been a struggle to teach students important skills while contending with the testing schedule which costs me about three weeks worth of instruction time.

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Educators do need assessments but they need to understand that one test does not fit all and that an assessment may not necessarily be a paper and pencil test.

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To guide instruction and check for understanding.

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Tasks used to check understanding and learning in order to best drive instruction.

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In my classroom the past two years my students have not been the biggest fans of testing due to over testing. Over testing makes it hard for the students to stay focused and often the assessment ended up rushing through resulting incorrect information.

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Yes! Educator's need assessments. Assessments are crucial in finding key areas of needed support and it also highlights students success. Assessments can often be dreadful but in an educator's point of view they are quite helpful in offering data. Which can be helpful in determining how and when you can assist a student.

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Assessments are used to gather relevant information about performance or progress.

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Assessments are defined as evaluating measurements of someone or somethings ability in specific areas. Assessments gauge skill level.

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My current assessment reality, ugh! Not only do I teach advanced 5th grade math, but I am also the testing liaison with our building's administration.  Since we didn't have students in the building the last quarter, we were unable to administer end of year assessments.  Without these assessments, we are unable to measure rate of growth from the beginning of the year compared the end of the year.

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Educators need assessments to guide future teaching. Should students have mastery of a concept, the need to continue teaching the same concept becomes mundane and irrelevant. Although, it is also important to reassess previously learned skills to check for retention of the skills.

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Assessment is used to guide instruction.

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Assessments are defined by measuring student success/mastery/accomplishment of a task or skill at hand. May be visual, oral, or tactile.

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Some assessments are created to see how well students do on their tests (ACT, SAT, AP) and don't accurately portray student comprehension and abilities. Not all students do well in formal test settings and some students see test and shut down regardless of being proficient or not.

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Yes. Assessments help students learn by showing them whether they are proficient in a topic or not. Educators then use this to help motivate their students and create future lessons to ensure students are understanding the course materials.

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To determine if a student is proficient in a subject matter and to gather information so a teacher can better serve her students.

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Evaluating and measuring students in their proficiency or knowledge of a certain subject.