What We Talk About When We Talk About Assessment
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Assessment

By Ilana Garon — March 13, 2014 1 min read
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Ilana Garon
Ilana Garon (@IlanaGaron) is an English teacher at a public high school in the Bronx, N.Y., and holds masters degrees in both English education and fine arts. In the past 10 years, she has taught every level of high school English, including ESL and AP, SAT Prep, and even math in emergency situations. In addition to Education Week Teacher, her writing has appeared in Dissent Magazine, Huffington Post, PresenTense Magazine, The Guardian and Business Insider. She is the author of “Why; Do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?": Teaching Lessons from the Bronx.

This week I’ve been under the weather, so I’m “cheating” by cross-posting an article I’ve written for Education Week’s online story package, New Directions in Assessment. In this piece, I talk about the Measures of Student Learning, or MOSL, a city-wide test that my students are required to take in the fall and the spring to determine--among other things--the relative strengths of their teachers.

As you might imagine, I have some antipathy towards the MOSL, though perhaps not for the reasons one might immediately think. Herein, I talk about the problems with the MOSL (and with similar types of assessments), what information we can and cannot gain from their administration, and how such assessments could be used effectively in a different context.

Speaking of assessments: Next week, assuming nothing more earth-shattering happens in the world of education, I’ll be discussing the proposed changes to the SAT, which I know everyone is very “hyped” about (to use a term my students employ in describing all types of excitement, good and bad). Until then, have a great weekend.

The opinions expressed in View From the Bronx: An Urban Teacher’s Perspective are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.