Whats the Difference Between Assessment and Grading?
• Grades are the symbols (often numbers) that teachers assign to student performance in order to communicate achievement to the student and parents. Grades can be very arbitrary (the numbers assigned to performance have no consistency) and abstract (they become more representative of student learning rather than what the student actually knows). • Assessment is the process of measuring student performance against a set of goals to determine whether or not the goals have been met. Assessment has two purposes: to guide teacher instruction and provide students with feedback for improving performance. Sometimes theorists separate assessment from evaluation (the assigning of meaning to student performance against learning goals), but the distinction is somewhat artificial. The 5 Principles of Assessment (PDF Documents) • Principle #1 The primary purpose of assessment is to improve learning for all students. • Principle #2 Assessment is aligned to standards. • Principle #3 Assessment is a pr
