Teachers\u27 Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices: Phase 2

A significant amount of recent literature has focused on classroom assessment and grading as essential aspects of effective teaching. There is an increased scrutiny of assessment as indicated by the popularity of performance assessment and portfolios, newly established national assessment competencies for teachers (Standards, 1990), and the interplay between learning, motivation, as assessment (Brookhart, 1993, 1994; Tittle, 1994). In Virginia, the Standards of Learning and associated tests highlight the importance of assessment. Previous research documents that teachers tend to award a hodgepodge grade of attitude, effort, and achievement (Brookhart, 1991, p. 36). It is also clear that teachers use a variety of assessment techniques, even if established measurement principles are often violated (Cross & Frary, 1996; Frary, Cross, & Weber, 1993; Plake & Impara, 1993; and Stiggins & Conklin, 1992). Given the variety of assessment and grading practices in the field, the increasing importance of assessment, the critical role each classroom teacher plays in determining assessments and grades, and the trend toward great accountability for teachers with state assessment approaches are inconsistent with much of the current literature, there is a need to (1) understand current assessment and grading practices (2) understand the relationship of these practices to grades given by teachers, (3) determine if standards teachers use to assign grades different from one classroom to another and one school to another, (4) examine the consequential validity of the new SOL tests on classroom assessment practices and (5) determine assessment and grading topic that, according to teachers, need in-service

Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices: A Review of the Literature

This review of literature is an analysis of completed research on the nature and effect of classroom assessment practices and grading. In recent years the assessment of student performance has become a central focus of efforts to reform education (Cizek, 1997). Policy-makers have increasingly seen assessment as a measure of student and school accountability, influencing curriculum and teaching. At the center of this movement is the classroom teacher. It is the teacher who communicates standards and expectations through the assessments students experience, and it is the teacher who makes decisions daily about what students learn. Classroom assessments, because students experience them continuously, are what have meaning to students concerning their abilities and achievement. Competent teachers use assessment to inform their instruction and determine student strengths and weaknesses. The revived interest in assessment has resulted in part by advances in cognitive learning theory, motivation, and constructivist learning. These fields have shown that effective instruction does much more than simply present information to students. Rather, good instruction provides an environment that engages students in active learning that connects new information with existing information. Learning is an ongoing. self-regulated process in which students actively receive, interpret, and relate information in a meaningful way to what they already know and understand. Recent motivational research as suggested that specific and meaningful feedback to students help determine student self-efficacy and self-confidence (Brookhart, 1997)