What is Assessment? Who Needs To Assess? Effects of Traditional Tests etc

Assessment may be defined as "any method used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses." This implies that assessment can be as simple as a teacher's subjective judgment based on a single observation of student performance, or as complex as a five-hour standardized test. The idea of current knowledge implies that what a student knows is always changing and that we can make judgments about student achievement through comparisons over a period …

…scoring procedures? (Performance-based assessments are by nature labor-intensive.) Multiple-choice measures have provided a reliable and easy-to-score means of assessing student outcomes. In addition, considerable test theory and statistical techniques were developed to support their development and use. Although there is now great excitement about performance-based assessment, we still know relatively little about methods for designing and validating such assessments. CRESST is one of many organizations and schools researching the promises and realities of such assessments.