A Philosophy of Assessments
The most important question to ask when deciding how to (Classically) test students.
From a student's perspective, tests and quizzes are the bane of formal education. What students don't realize is that tests and quizzes are often also the bane of good teaching practice for their teachers. And while we're at it, I'll go ahead and say that parents also need to realize just how hard it is to get assessment right. Good teachers can spend years honing in their assessment skills, and they'll still never feel like they've got it right. There are so many variables, so many things to evaluate, so many ways to do it. And so much pressure to do it up to expectations, too.
Half the battle in coming up with a good assessment is understanding the nature of the thing that needs to be assessed. Is it knowledge? Is it a skill? Is it memory? Is it comprehension? Is it mastery? Is it a combination of few of these?
Some Categories
To make things simple for us (and also classical), I'm going to break down the types of things that we can asses into three groups. You'll notice right away that these categories of things to assess are straight from just about any marketing piece you'll read about Classical Education, although they don't necessarily belong to the Classical realm exclusively. They are the recognized "stages" of learning which have been presumed upon as the foundation of schooling efforts since the Middle Ages. In her iconic 1947 speech titled, "The Lost Tools of Learning," Dorothy Sayers referenced these categories as the "Parrot, Pert, and Poet." The Trivium of the Middle Ages recognized them as the Grammar, the Dialectic, and the Rhetoric. And modern Classical Schools often call them the Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric stages of student learning.
In case you aren't familiar with these categories (they're actually really intuitive), I'll briefly explain. Actually, I'll let Wikipedia explain:
Grammar teaches the mechanics of language to the student. This is the step where the student "comes to terms," defining the objects and information perceived by the five senses. Hence, the Law of Identity: a tree is a tree, and not a cat.
Logic (also dialectic) is the "mechanics" of thought and of analysis, the process of composing sound arguments and identifying fallacious arguments and statements and so systematically removing contradictions, thereby producing factual knowledge that can be trusted.
Rhetoric is the application of language in order to instruct and to persuade the listener and the reader. It is the knowledge (grammar) now understood (logic) and being transmitted outwards as wisdom (rhetoric).
To put it in my own words:
Grammar is concerned with giving a student the tools for having dexterity with a subject.
Logic is concerned with enabling a student to discern the proper use of the subject.
Rhetoric is concerned with freeing a student to himself employ the subject for his own creations.
So, in order to discern good assessments, a teacher has to first recognize if a student is needing to demonstrate either a grammatical grasp, or a logical capability, or a rhetorical power over a certain subject matter. This is why younger grades utilize spelling tests over vocabulary words (the grammar of language), and why older grades employ essay questions over works of literature (the rhetoric of language).
Some Particulars
Early years in school (K-3ish) are heavy with grammatical categories of learning. Young students are asked to know letters, phonograms, dates, events, numbers, words, terms, shapes, sounds, etc. Such are the "tools" of learning language, history, math, art, music, science, and any other subject. They should, therefore, be assessed according to their mastery of these grammatical elements. At this level, tests over memory are common and appropriate, for the goal is to instill the grammar of every discipline into the student.
Middle years (4ish-8ish) still equip students with more robust grammatical tools (algorithms, literary devices, military campaigns, natural processes, music theory, theology, to name a few), but the thrust of teaching in these grades shifts to become more and more logical than grammatical. Students are being asked more and more to discern and discover by means of the grammatical tools they have already acquired. Assessment, therefore, shifts to determining how well students can examine a work of literature, analyze a piece of art, discover the persuasive elements of a speech, or predict the outcome of a science experiment.
High School years (9ish-12ish) build upon a student's mastery of grammar and capability with logic by asking him to create using the power of rhetoric. Not only can students in this group comprehend the arguments of someone else's persuasive speech, but they can also formulate a rebuttal to it on their own. Not only are such students asked to evaluate the outcome of a historical battle, but they are also expected to consider how its lessons inform and instruct the behavior of future generations. Assessments at this level, therefore, should have components which evaluate a student's ability to actively use knowledge and his discernment to fashion something new and unique.
All this said, there is not a clear break from grammar to logic and from logic to rhetoric as a student progresses. As a Biology professor at the college level, I've had to teach the "grammar" of cellular components to adults. But to the same student group I also taught the "logic" of biochemical pathways, and I asked students to demonstrate the "rhetorical" ability of designing their own experiments. So we never move away from teaching or assessing all three levels.
I'm just saying teachers need to be aware of which of them they are assessing with any given request.
Some Concluding Thoughts
If teachers think this way about their assessments, they'll be empowered to attain helpful information that will better their practice. For example, if their learning outcomes require a logic/dialectic skill within the subject matter of history, then they'll never really know how they're doing if they only assess the grammar of history (i.e. a match-the-date-to-the-event kind of test). But if they present students with a scenario, and ask them to make judgement calls based upon their knowledge, then a better evaluation of their ability to discern can be made.
Scores of ideas exist regarding particular means of assessment — whether verbal or written, whether by test or by project, and the list goes on and on. Those aren't what I wanted to point attention to in this piece, although such particulars are important to discuss. My hope, rather, was to lay a foundation for answering the most important and fundamental question that concerns assessing student knowledge.
At its most basic level, an assessment of a student is successful only if it reveals the right thing about the student's knowledge/thinking/ability. The first question, therefore, that a teacher needs to have in his or her mind when designing an assessment must be the question of which area of learning needs to be evaluated. The most fundamental matter of assessment concerns the question of whether it is an issue of grammar, of dialectic, or of rhetoric that needs to be measured.