Student Evaluation

Well respected and esteemed 26th president, Abraham Lincoln, once said, “the philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” The experiences and education an individual receives during their youth through schooling is an essential part of how one can prosper and succeed in future society. Such experiences and knowledge sets the key foundation to enable an individual to be more informed and open-minded about numerous aspects and parts of life. However, although it’s useful to broaden an individual’s understanding of topics and subjects present in the current society, intelligence should be defined not solely as reasoning and factual knowledge. Rather, it should be equally about promoting and nurturing one’s creativity and divergent thinking through the use of divergent curriculum and encouragement of such through both proficient and esteemed …show more content…
States should begin to broaden testing and assessment vehicles through the use of “student portfolios and presentations as additional measures of student understanding” (Hammond). This is not to dissuade the complete disuse of standardized testing in schools as part of the grading system, but more so to allow social and cumulative projects to be of a higher value towards a student’s grade as well. Additionally, such evaluation can be further solidified through the use of “open-ended or constructed response items that ask students to respond in their own words--to "construct" their answers” (Assess Learning”). Rather, students should further extend responses to items through the incorporation of their own views so as to “reason out their solutions as part of their answers” (“Assess Learning”) in order to be better assessed in both their own self progress and intellectual