"Why the Best Teachers Don't Give Tests"

I stole the title for this post directly from a 2014 blog post by Alfie Kohn ( https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/no-tests/ ), who is a writer of many books and articles about education.  I was alerted to his website by my Twitter connection to Dr. Stephen Krashen (@skrashen), the well-known explorer of language acquisition theory.  Both of their accounts are worth following because they frequently post links to great resources for educators.  This particular article touches on a theme that remains a hot topic in educational discussions, and I'm pretty sure we haven't solved the issues it raises.

There are a couple of comments I would like to make in response to his article.  The first is that I generally agree with his point that there are many effective ways to judge student progress that are not formal tests.  I wish I had known more about some of these when I was teaching English in Brazil.  I know for a fact that I was unable to pass certain good students simply because they didn't perform well on the exams.  I even remember telling some students that I knew it was an imperfect way to evaluate them, but it was the only way we had.  I was wrong, and of course there are other ways, but we could not use them because of policy.  It is impossible to ignore the necessity for test preparation at this moment in educational history, because student progress, school funding, and policy from the state and federal governments are all guided by data from standardized testing.  In my experience, students do better if you prepare them for those.  Until the state and federal education departments change their means of data collection and finance distribution, the teachers will need to prepare students to be good test takers.  However, teachers also need to be advocates for the students.  I think teachers should put their heads together and come up with innovative ways to measure student progress and gather data in state mandated core areas without passing out traditional tests.  Eventually, this innovation should make its way up to the state level.  How about an assessment revolution?

One of the results of my Master's Degree coursework at ACE  was that I learned about effective ways of using students' in-class and long-term production to evaluate progress and proficiency.  Two methods I included in lesson plans were student journals and portfolios. Alfie Kohn mentions some other methods at the end of his article.  I think it would be worth your while to go check it out, and then let me know your thoughts in the comments.