Considering the Options

• In Event: Enhancing Parents' and Policy-Makers' Assessment Literacy: Considering the Options

Abstract

Presenter 3 Summary
In the proposed symposium’s third presentation, a distinguished academic who has recently authored a number of influential books on educational assessment will turn her attention to the way that students’ parents might best learn about the classroom assessments used with their children. Her practicable and readily implementable strategy for doing so centers on promoting parents’ asking questions of their children’s teachers. The questions she intends to identify would, by orienting parents to assessment issues of import, trigger parental understanding of the most important measurement topics. She will suggest, however, that parents should be sensitized in advance regarding what sorts of answers from teachers would reflect high-quality assessment—or its opposite.
The following are examples of the kinds of questions Presenter 3 will be recommending to parents: (1) What are your learning goals for this unit/quarter/semester/year? (2) Do the learning goals you have set for my child differ at all from the goals you have set for the rest of the students in this class? (3) How will you, my child, and I know whether my child has achieved the goals you have set, and what can be done if those goals have not been met? (4) What factors are employed when deciding on the grade my child is to be given by you? (5) Are there good reasons for participation in large-scale testing, rather than opting out?
In each instance, suggestions will be provided so that parents can gauge the appropriateness of a teacher’s response to a given question. In a very direct sense, this collection of questions and potential good/bad answers lays out the framework for parents to think about assessment as it affects their own children. By keeping the questions few in number, and focusing chiefly on the highest-priority issues, parents can readily master a modest collection of key assessment issues and learn how they can be resolved.
Although perhaps obvious, it should be stressed that when parents begin to ask important and probing questions of teachers about their classroom assessments, this will function as a potent catalyst for teachers to augment their own assessment acumen. Indeed, parents might well function as a terrifically powerful factor in teachers’ becoming more assessment literate. At the same time, such conversations can prompt parents to support teachers’ efforts in a way that promotes their children’s learning.
Presenter 3 will conclude her remarks by presenting her own estimate of the most important elements of her parental-question strategy in not only answering parents’ queries about their own children’s assessments, but also in furthering the assessment literacy of those children’s teachers

Author

• Heidi L. Andrade, University at Albany - SUNY