The Blurred Lines of Assessment

There are clear and concise images displayed in most paintings and art.  However, occasionally, you see a work of art that has blurred lines and is much more subtle in it’s appearance.  I thought of this watercolor with blurred lines (a purposeful lack of specific images) as I was speaking with two education managers at a local Head Start agency.

The managers were concerned about the lack of clarity and the blurriness of their assessment procedures.  Their concern stems from indications that the students in their program are not displaying the skills that their observation assessments seem to indicate.  Their concern is that the teachers are documenting what they think they observe during their classroom interactions, but don’t explicitly determine if each child has clearly developed individual skills.

Many preschool assessment programs are like that.  My opinion is that they contain so much information and documentation that the basic tracking of skill development is lost.  I believe that many programs try to solve every problem and cover everything that could possibly happen in a classroom.  This massive amount of documentation can weigh down the teacher and she/he doesn’t master any of the procedures because of the overwhelming amount of paperwork.

Many years ago, when I was  Head Start Education Manager, I developed a simple road map of skills from the HS Outcome Indicator document.  I put them in developmental order and they were posted in each classroom.  Even though we had other assessments in place, this was a hands-on individualization that helped the teacher easily track progress.  What happened was that we began to actually see skill development in the children.  We still had our observation assessment that we documented, but we had a quick way to evaluate whether the child had the skill.  That simple road map provided so much clarity for the teacher that she/he began to understand how individualization works and how to put all the pieces in place.

I bring assessment up at this time of year since most programs do an assessment at the end of the school year.  While subtle images and blurriness may have their place in a watercolor portrait, they do not have a place in appropriate assessments. It is critical that we track a child’s progress in a clear, developmentally appropriate way.