A wider vision of learning and assessment

Actor Peter Falk, made famous by his role as Columbo in the eponymous 1970s television series, once shared a story about his glass eye. When he was three years old, he explained, he had retinoblastoma and had to have his right eye removed. Years later, when he sought to qualify for the Merchant Marines, he was required to pass a vision test. The examiner told him to cover his right eye, and Falk read the chart perfectly. Then the examiner told him to cover his left eye. Said Falk, “I can’t see. I got a glass eye.” The examiner responded, “Well, do the best you can.”   

Today, school leaders tend to be fixated on using big data to crunch a narrow set of numbers, rather than actually thinking big — and deep and broad — about learning. And the more sophisticated the technology they apply (or misapply) to the same handful of indicators, the less clearly they see their students. They use test results to assign learners to groups so that schools can provide “appropriate” interventions, but they don’t actually know very much about the varying talents and interests of the individuals they put into those groups, nor do they know much about the personal struggles they may be facing that can profoundly affect their performance.  

Further, they may not be able to imagine other ways of assessing students, or — consistent with Abraham Maslow’s observation that a fear of knowing is a fear of doing — they may lack the courage to look more deeply at the talent that sits before them. After all, if they did so, then they might feel obliged to act on what they learn, and this could interfere with their ability to complete the tasks they’ve been assigned. Worse yet, if educators allowed themselves to know more about their students, then they might be forced to acknowledge that the whole system needs to be redesigned.