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WHAT WORKS IN EDUCATION The George Lucas Educational Foundation
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How Can We Make Assessments Meaningful?

Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Middle School teacher by day, Tweenteacher by night


Thankfully, with the Common Core standards exemplifying the 4Cs: Creativity and Critical Thinking (through performance-based assessments), Collaboration, and Communication (in particular through the use of interdisciplinary writing), we are looking at a more fluid future in testing formats. As long as the format itself is aligned with real-world skills, a meaningful assessment does not need to be lock step with a particular structure anymore.

When I think about my own definition of a "meaningful assessment," I think the test must meet certain requirements. The assessment must have value other than "because it's on the test." It has value to the individual student who is taking it. It must intend to impact the world beyond the student "self," whether it is on the school site, the outlying community, the state, country, world, etc. And finally, the assessment should incorporate skills that students need for their future. That is, the test must assess skills other than the mere content. It must also test how eloquent the students communicate their content.

Criteria for a Meaningful Classroom Assessment


  1. Does the assessment involve project-based learning?
  2. Does it allow for student choice of topics?
  3. Is it inquiry based?
  5. Does it involve independent problem solving?
  6. Does it incorporate the 4Cs?
  8. Does the final draft or project require other modalities in its presentation? (visual, oral, data, etc...)



Transparency in Why It's Important

That requires taking the effort to inform the students why the assessment has value. Some teachers still balk at this job, as if students should just trust that what we do in school has value to what happens outside of school. However, kids are smart these days. They know that bubbling with a #2 pencil is antiquated. They know that much of the content we teach them can be found via Google if they were so inclined. But as savvy as students are, they don't know everything about communicating their content, and we owe it to them to make sure that not only are our tests aligned with skills they must know for their future, but to make sure that we've been transparent in our rationale.

So how can high-stakes assessments be meaningful to students? For one thing, high-stakes tests shouldn't be so high-stakes. It's inauthentic. They should and still can be a mere snapshot of ability. Additionally, those occasional assessments need to take a back seat to the real learning and achievement going on in every day assessments observed by the teacher.

The key here, however, is to assess everyday. Not in boring, multiple-choice daily quizzes, but in informal, engaging assessments that take more than just a snapshot of a student's knowledge at one moment in time.

But frankly, any assessment that sounds cool can still be made meaningless. It's how the students interact with the test that makes it meaningful. Remember the 4 Cs and ask this: does the assessment allow for:


Collaboration Have they spent some time working with others to formulate their thoughts, brainstorm, or seek feedback from peers?


Communication Does the assessment emphasize the need to communicate the content well? Is there writing involved as well as other modalities? If asked to teach the content to other students, what methods will the student use to communicate the information and help embed it more deeply?

Rubric on Meaningful Assessments




So how do you ensure that your classroom assessments are meaningful?

Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Middle School teacher by day, Tweenteacher by night
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