Spring is the time when the seasons change. The days start to get longer. New life springs up all around us. It is also the time of standardized testing season for schools around the country. As someone who has experienced the whirlwind of standardized assessments as a parent, a teacher, a coach, and a mentor, I can tell you that just the words “standardized assessments” sets some people’s skin to crawling. It can be a very stressful time for students, parents, teachers, administrators, and school district staff alike. These days there is so much riding on test scores. Student grades, teacher evaluation outcomes, school ranking, district funding, and state and national educational effectiveness ratings are all things that ride on the outcomes of standardized testing results. Personally, I don’t find this type of evaluating student learning to be effective or productive. It is very difficult to gauge what a student, or a group of students learns, understands, and knows by using this type of testing.  It is one small snapshot, given within a very small window of time, with assessment techniques that are oftentimes unfamiliar to the students being evaluated which can very easily lead to inaccurate results.

As a Montessorian, I have been taught that it is more effective to gauge student learning by using a demonstration of mastery approach to assessment. In a nutshell, that means that a student has learned a skill. They had the concept presented to them in a lesson. They spent time practicing the skill through doing work using the Montessori materials designed to isolate that skill. As they practiced the skills through work, their skills improved and eventually, the skill was mastered. These different steps throughout the learning process are documented by the teacher as the student progresses from one stage to the next using the Montessori Triangle method that is demonstrated in the picture at the top of this post. At that point, the skill has been mastered. The student is able to demonstrate the learned skill by doing the work and either explaining what they are doing and thinking as they complete the work, or they present the lesson to another student and explain it as they present it to their peer. Depending on the skill that has been learned, there may be other performance-based, or project-based assessment techniques that the student can do to demonstrate mastery of their learning. The teacher observes the student doing the work, watches their procedure as they complete the work, and listens to the explanation given by the student as the demonstration is being done. As a trained Montessori teacher, it is evident that the student either has, or has not, mastered the skill. If the student makes a mistake in their demonstration, the skill has not been mastered and needs to be re-taught or practiced further before mastery can be achieved and properly demonstrated. It takes practice for the teacher to be able to analyze student learning and mastery in this way. But it is a technique that can very easily assess if the student has mastered the skill being assessed.

This method of assessment of student learning is much more individualized, authentic, and accurate than what can be quantified on any standardized test. I realize that the proponents of standardized testing would say that it is impossible to gather large amounts of objective data by doing a demonstration of mastery approach to assessment. As a learner, a parent, a teacher, and a teacher coach and mentor, my goal for assessing student learning is much more personalized than a number in a box on a spreadsheet in a meeting. It is about accurately evaluating a specific student, at a specific time, on their own specific journey towards learning and mastering the skills they need. We want students to become happy, successful, productive, and meaningful adults who can make a positive difference in the world using the skills they have learned and mastered along the way. That should be the ultimate goal of student assessment. And as such, the idea of using standardized tests to assess student achievement does not serve the student or society well. I will continue to use a demonstration of mastery approach to student assessment in lieu of administering standardized tests in the work that I do with students, teachers, families, learning pods, schools and school districts. If you would like more information about mastery learning and Montessori assessment practices, please feel free to leave a comment on the Contact Us page of our website.  I would love to hear from you.