Math Teachers Encouraged to Assess Creatively

St. Louis

Math teachers from across the country, already facing enormous pressure to raise scores on high-stakes tests, should embrace other, more creative forms of assessment as a way to improve their instruction, peers at their annual meeting urged.

Assessment, far from being a dirty word, was a major theme at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

NCTM officials used the event here to highlight the ways in which math teachers can use a broad range of assessments in their classes—beyond simply paper-and-pencil tests—to gauge whether students are learning and adjust...