Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., is an insightful critic of contemporary “reforms.” In this post, he envisions a different way to use assessments.

“Frequent high-stakes testing and its misuse for teacher evaluation are poisoning the assessment waters. Assessment should not be the goal of learning. The word “assessment” should not make students, teachers, administrators and parents cringe. It does not have to be this way. For students and their teachers the most effective use of assessment is to guide next steps for learning.

“What if we shifted the balance of our assessment attention from the summative to the formative—assessment that can be used every day to support learning?

“What if we could more precisely identify where each student was along the pathway to learning?

“What if we could be more accurate at sorting out the nuances in his or her gaps in understanding?”

His central point: Don’t judge, inform.

He concludes:

“Less focus on summative assessment of learning and more focus on daily, embedded formative assessment will help us reclaim the central role of teachers and the art of teaching that I think has been de-emphasized by the focus on summative testing, Adequate Yearly Progress and value-added metrics for teacher evaluation. Research that compares the relative effects on posttest student performance from grades, grades with comments, and comments alone suggests that summative judgments, even when accompanied by comments intended to help, are far less effective than helpful guiding comments alone in motivating students and increasing their learning (Butler, 1987). It may be that summative and formative assessments have that same relationship on effective teaching. A focus on formative assessment and its key component—feedback to students—will shift our perspective on diagnostic data from a source of judgment to a source of information for improvement.

“Of course, not every educational goal is easily measured. Subject matter knowledge and skills are certainly important, but so are imagination, creativity, flexibility, respect and social responsibility. I am not arguing for turning classrooms into a diagnostic laboratory. Classrooms should be places of joy, friendship and discovery. However, I do believe that we can learn to be more productively tuned into the nuances of students learning. We can learn to more effectively provide feedback to students so that they can move their own learning forward.

“I have tried to articulate what I consider challenging aspirational goals. Achieving all of them will be a long-term effort, demanding shared learning and responsibility among teachers, principals, school systems, curriculum developers, psychometricians, and policy makers at all levels. Most importantly, it will require time for teachers to collaborate to share ideas and practice. However, I believe that this balanced view, with an emphasis on classroom assessment, gives us direction and points us toward small steps we all can begin to take on the journey.”