The word “class” gets thrown around in all sorts of sloppy ways.  People use it to mean “cohort,” “course,” “group of kids taking a course,” “lesson.”

The word “activity” is one that I have almost completely banned from my speech because the word ostensibly means any state of affairs taking place under circumstances hotter than absolute zero. 

And I really know that teachers are floundering when I hear then they start using the word “aim.” 

“The aim of this activity is to expose the students to the language so as to make sure they understand the aims of the class.”

But PERVASIVE, and particularly insidious, is the way in which educators tend to use the word “assessment.”  Confusion concerning what is meant by the word “assessment” lies at the heard of all sorts of bad decisions that educators make.  Some examples….

A)  A returnee student that spent four years in an American elementary school relocates to Japan for junior high school, and repeatedly gets the message that he “is doing well in English class.”  (Here, a Diagnostic Assessment is mistaken for a Standardized Assessment.)

B)  A student that failed to prepare for her presentation today, and so got a very low score comes to believe that her English skills are in decline.  (Here, a Coercive Assessment is mistaken for a Graduated Assessment.)

The word “assessment” means one of four things.  These four types of assessment do not mix.  Trying to mix them hurts feelings, confuses objectives, and degrades the profession.  Don’t do it….

Here they are….

Diagnostic Assessment (determining needs) — this is what a teacher needs to be doing all the time from when s/he punches in to when s/he punches out.  The purpose of a Diagnostic Assessment is to determine the student's needs vis-a-vis the particular services the assessor is able to provide.  This is analogous to what a doctor is expected to do with a patient.  (Pick a real profession, actually:  lawyer vis-a-vis a client; engineer vis-a-vis a given configuration of material.)

Graduated Assessment (measuring change) — Measure something measurable once, and then measure it again later on.  “How many times did this student say ‘um’ on Monday?”  And then, “how many times did this student say ‘um’ on Friday.”

Standardised Assessment (measuring difference) — Measure the number of times the student says “um,” then compare that against an average of the number of times the average student says “um” under similar circumstances. 

Coercive Assessment (motivating) — Give the student a command, award a score that reflects the student’s willingness or ability to obey the command.

Again and again, I see examples of how an educator's reluctance to really internalize the imperatives that govern Coercive Assessment can ruin the work he or she is trying to do.

In the case of Example A above, if the classmates of the returnee student perceive that he earned full marks only by having gone to school in America, then that is profoundly demotivating for them.  They don't mind if the returnee begins with advantages in terms of aptitude, but they need to know that the grades that they are getting reflect the extent to which they rose to the demands of the course.  If, say, writing 120 words for homework is easy for the returnee kid, and he gets full marks for completing that assignment just as everyone else was required to, then there is nothing to resent. 

In the case of Example B, do not spare the student the low score that she earned for not being prepared for her presentation, but communicate that you know that she can do better and create opportunities for her to do better.  Communicate that you are not asking her to meet some sort of in-the-eyes-of-God standard.  You are simply asking her to show evidence of a certain level of effort by achieving certain outcomes.  Communicate that those outcomes, not any in-the-eyes-of-God aptitude, is what you are scoring.

An Aside:  about democratizing coercion ...

It is popular in some progressive circles to experiment with students taking part in assigning their own grades.  This is profoundly misguided.

It is an excellent pedagogical strategy to involve students in their own Diagnostic Assessments.  Ownership by the student on that level is, one might argue, precisely what it means to have succeeded as a teacher.

But asking a student to somehow cooperate with you in the assigning of her/his own final grade is an entirely different matter.  The intuitive appeal of this tactic has largely to do with the fact that we, as teachers, are always semi-conscious of the fact that grades and scores (Coercive Assessments) can never be 100% fair.  Advocates of giving students a voice in determining their own grades probably think that what they are doing is making the system more fair by doing so, but you, the teacher, are hired and trained to make your grades and scores as fair as possible.  The students are not.

The inevitable result of "giving" students a voice in determining their scores is that (a) the grading system that is less fair, and that (b) the resultant guilt -- which only you, as the trained professional should struggle with -- is distributed to the students who did nothing to deserve this guilt, and are not trained to struggle with it.

In Conclusion ...

Students do not look to you to be an arbiter concerning precisely how smart they are.  First and foremost, they look to you to inspire them to reach beyond themselves in general.  But in more mundane terms, they look to you to lay out the rewards and punishments associated with your course in such a way that they themselves as well as their classmates are encouraged towards actions that facilitate a meaningful learning environment. 

Do not get into the game of trying to pretend that the students that earn 100% are of higher aptitude than those that earn 90%.  Rather be fair in the sense that your Coercive Assessment rewards the students for rising to the expectations that you have communicated.