The third chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, by Rick Wormeli, focused on the usage of assessments in a healthy manner. Throughout the chapter many topics were covered including: assessments, differentiated instruction, and determining readiness/ essential understanding. Three types of assessment were discussed: pre-assessments (to check for prior understanding and knowledge), formative assessments (checkpoints that help monitor retention and understanding of information), and summative assessments (final exams that assess mastery). By strategically placing these three types of assessments the teacher can develop a greater understanding of the classes knowledgeability before, during, and after a lesson. Assessments can provide the teacher some perspective on where a specific lesson was successful.
Personally, I think assessments are a double-edged sword; on the one hand, they can be helpful in understanding class-wide (not individual) mastery, however it seems a nearly impossible feat to create an exam that is fair to everybody. Likewise, if the teacher does not use the exam to better themselves than it is a waste of time. As a teacher, I am pretty certain that I would provide exams, however they would not weigh nearly as much most. When a teacher makes an exam weigh thirty percent or more of the students’ grades I think it is basically asking for failure, not only is the exam most likely not accessible to all learning styles, but then you must consider outside factors that the students bring into the classroom (emotions, hours of sleep, etc). Assessments are great check-points and a decent way for the teacher to reflect on themselves, but I would argue that they are not an accurate way to judge individual mastery of materials.
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