1 Simply Assessment Valerie J. Shute Educational Psychology and Learning Systems Florida State University vshute@fsu.edu Standardized tests are monstrously unfair to many kids. We’re creating a one‐size‐fits‐all system that needlessly brands many young people as failures, when they might thrive if offered a different education whose progress was measured differently. ~Robert Reich Assessment gets a bum rap. Part of this is because people tend to equate assessment with testing. 1 In addition, assessment has historically acted as a barrier rather than a bridge to educational opportunity. Now, suppose that you surveyed a random sample of 100 people on the street regarding their thoughts on “assessment.” It’s quite possible that many of them may view it negatively—as unfair, difficult, confusing, inauthentic, boring, constraining, contrived, old school, and so on. Similarly, if you surveyed a random sample of 100 K-12 teachers, it’s likely that they, too, may harbor some ill will toward the topic of assessment. Their misgivings may be colored by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) initiative which has, so far, failed to live up to its promises. Instead, NCLB, with its focus on accountability, has promoted a zeitgeist of “teaching to the test” where ultimately what gets left behind is deeper, more meaningful learning (i.e., knowledge, skills, concepts, and beliefs that are fully understood and can be related to other concepts). That is, meaningful learning is a desirable goal but much harder to test than rote learning, which is less desirable but fairly easy to test. There is, however, another more attractive face of assessment, where the primary goal is to improve peoples’ learning (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998; Shute, 2007; Stiggins, 2008). Stiggins (2008) suggests that we assess for two reasons: to gather evidence to inform instructional decisions, and to encourage learners to try to learn. It is this face of educational assessment that I find to be exciting, powerful, and absolutely critical to support the kinds of learning outcomes and processes necessary to succeed in the 21 st century. I’m referring to “formative assessment,” which may be thought of as assessment for learning, in contrast to “summative assessment” (or assessment of learning). The primary premise underlying this essay is that assessment results can and should have important implications for instruction, positively influencing both the teaching and learning sides of the equation. In today’s classrooms, however, assessments are too often used for purposes of grading, promotion, and placement, but not for learning. The stance I take on assessment is that it should: (a) support, not undermine, the learning process for learners and teachers/mentors; (b) provide more formative, compared to summative, information (i.e., give useful feedback during 1 In fact, these are not the same (see Shute & Zapata-Rivera, in press), which I hope to demystify in this essay.