Nicole Nikonetz

001173377

EDUC 3504 MNO

October 6th, 2017

Reflecting on Issues in Assessment

Fair assessment practices are meaningful, and integral to becoming a well-rounded

teacher. As teaching philosophies develop and individual assessment styles emerge, the one

commonality that all absolutely must aim for is utilizing assessments fairly. Understanding the

issues surrounding fair assessments is something that every teacher should be aware of in order

to make informed decisions in their classrooms. How they will tackle those issues and create

equitable opportunities for learning depends on a thorough understanding on what issues arise

when trying to create fair assessments.

Before exploring this issue in depth, my beliefs of what constitutes a fair assessment were

not very well formed. Fairness felt like a very general, abstract idea that would be difficult to

ensure was present in my classroom. Delving into the issues around this topic challenged my

ideas of fairness because it required me to consider it as a concrete tool that I have control over

and can manipulate.

My solution-based mindset made it difficult to examine the issues thoroughly without

also looking just as thoroughly at ways to combat these issues. I feel that by looking at both the

strengths and issues of fairness in numerous modalities, I gained a better understanding of

realistic and achievable ways to incorporate fairness into my class. This includes knowing when

to use formative assessments and when to use summative ones, as well as being aware of the

multiple literacies that I can pull from when creating assessments.

 Something that really intrigued me was the realization that two types of fairness were

emerging in our presentation: the fairness that was incorporated directly into the assessments

themselves, and the fairness with which teachers presented these assessments to their students in

order to give everyone an opportunity to succeed.

The commonality between my research on fairness in standardization and fairness in

differentiation was that both addressed the two types of fairness noted above. The fact that fair

assessments are not simply a product of validity and reliability, but also developed through their

integration into the classroom, was something that challenged and expanded my understandings

of assessment. I was also surprised at how much teachers can use differentiation even within

standardization, using the strengths of differentiation in fairness to strengthen the weaker aspects

of standardization in fairness. For example, the belief that standardized tests can be too uniform

can be made more equitable by differentiating the seating plan, time constraints, as well as

accommodating individual student needs. While this only partially tackles the issue of

standardization being too uniform (it is really only accomplishable on an individual classroom

level) it expanded my teaching philosophy by exemplifying how to blend the strengths of

assessment types to ensure fairness.

While prior to exploring this issue, I may not have had the proper terminology for

validity and reliability issues, I feel that the concepts and their relation to fairness were an

undercurrent in my teaching philosophy. This was affirmed as we learned the correct

descriptions of each type of validity and reliability. On the standardized assessment page of our

weebly, under the high stakes testing cartoon, I actually had to go back and add in the correct

terminology after learning it. The descriptions of both construct and content validity were
already present, but were affirmed by the definitions given in class that exactly complemented

my research.

My personal theory of teaching and learning is still new, and will surely evolve and

change as I learn more about the assessment process. Working fair assessment practices into this

framework is valuable to me because it will factor into how I assess my future students and will

be integral to creating the classroom environment that I want to see in my class. Fairness will not

only be seen in the construction of the assignment, but also in the presentation of it, and I will be

able to better assess authentic student learning. Which, ultimately, is the true goal of creating a

fair assessment.