Writing Assignment #1: “Check Up” Assessments

Department of Education, University of the People

Dr. Michael Jarrett

EDUC 5440 – AY2022 – T1

09/08/2021
 Introduction

The school I work at is in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It is a K-12 school and there I

teach AP Calculus AB/BC and AP Statistics. I have been teaching in this role and school for

about ten years now. In my classes, traditional assessments are used fewer and farther

between than in most other math classes around the world, and there’s an important reason

for this: I believe that the way in which we have traditionally assessed students on their

mathematical aptitude does not fully capture, nor fully promote, their abilities. However, at

my school, formal assessments among other teachers and departments are used quite often,

perhaps more so than were implemented when I was a high school student.

What Assessment Practices are at my School?

One of the common assessments used in my school is the “check up” test, which occurs

roughly three times in any given school year. The style for this assessment is quite strict, and

includes timed structures, scripted presentation from the administrator, and computer-based

assessments. This test is done as an assessment of learning, in which the first “check up” is a

summative assessment of the content learned in the previous year (Western and Northern

Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006). The second “check up” is a

summative exam of the first semester’s content. The final “check up” covers all content from

the second semester’s content. All of these assessments culminate in a national Vietnamese

examination, again used as an assessment of learning, in order to verify that the content

provided by teachers was understood understood by the student (Western and Northern

Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006). While none of these scores bears

any effect on a student’s matriculation, the formal setting is certainly intended to

communicate to students that these examinations are of extreme importance.

Furthermore, the assessments provided by the school in order to maintain a semblance of

accountability for the teacher to teach with curriculum standards in mind, as well as to provide

the student with clear data to show whether they are progressing on grade level as expected.

Arguably these goals are reasonable and that the examinations therefore serve some purpose.

One may say then that these assessments are used by the school “for” learning. The scores of

these examinations potentially may used by teachers to evaluate which students should be

considered for remediation services, although these services rarely manifest in practice. In

addition, these goals may arguably justify the notion that the assessments are reliable, relevant,

and unbiased (Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006).

However, I would argue that, as these examinations are little more than theatre in the grand

scheme of things, their pedagogical use, as well as their purpose in curriculum development and

planning, is severely limited.

Are These Exams Useful?

These exams are not as effective in assessing students as they claim to be. As my school

is a private school, it becomes somewhat ridiculous to utilize these metrics to the degree that

we use them, especially when it remains uncertain if parents or other stakeholders fully

understand their meaning. Frankly, these exams are used as little more than marketing tools,

convincing parents and other school investors that our school is performing well without ever

fully defining what “well” even means. The apparent meaning of these examinations is the

driving reason for the use of three “check up” assessments, and yet their meaning has not been

manifested. For these basic reasons, the examinations lack even the most basic standards of

legitimacy (Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education, 2006).
 Fisher (2009) would contend that these assessments are part of a broader framework

of capitalist surveillance hegemony, a framework which he paradoxically calls “market

Stalinism”. Fisher explains his paradoxical term with an example:

“For the [university] degree program as a whole, academics must prepare a 'program

specification', as well as producing 'annual program reports', which record student

performance according to 'progression rates', 'withdrawal rates', location and spread of

marks. All students' marks have to be graded against a 'matrix'. This auto-surveillance is

complemented by assessments carried out by external authorities… the drive to assess the

performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant

to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy.”

In other words, assessments such as these, in an attempt to measure that which is not

supposed to be measurable, end up producing less rational decision-making and more

bureaucratic redtape. The apparent efficiency of market-based competitive evaluations is

instead a Stalinist nightmare of confusion and inertia.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, I do not find any educational value in these assessments, and

would wish to see them eliminated at the school’s earliest convenience.

Butler, S. and McMunn, N. (2009). A teacher’s guide to classroom assessment:

Understanding and using assessment to improve student learning. Jossey-Bass.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing, 2009.

Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education. (2006).

Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind. Retrieved

from: https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/assess/wncp/full_doc.pdf