Where questions about educational mission and values are skipped over, assessment threatens to be an exercise in measuring what. s easy, rather than a process of improving what we really care about. Assessment is most effective when it reflects an understanding of learning as multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time. Learning is a complex process. Assessment should reflect these understandings by employing a diverse array of methods, including those that call for actual performance, using them over time so as to reveal change, growth and increasing degrees of integration. Such an approach aims for a more complete and accurate picture of learning, and therefore firmer bases for improving our students.
Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly state purposes.
Assessment is a goal-oriented process. Clear, shared, implementable goals are the cornerstone for assessment that is focused and useful. Assessment requires attention to outcomes but also and equally to the experiences that lead to those outcomes. But to improve outcomes, we need to know about student experiences along the way - about the curricula, teaching and kind of student effort that lead to particular outcomes. Assessment works best when it is ongoing, not episodic.