Breaking News continually surrounds us with existential challenges that demand our attention, reflection, possible intervention and even personal adaptation. Some risks we face are the uncertainty of AI impacts on industry and communication, bewildering threats related to disease and climate, unprecedented social polarization and discord, and frightening levels of violence and human deprivation unbecoming to 21st century civilization.

Articles, blogs, books, broadcasts, podcasts, social media, even rallies and street demonstrations are surging, driven by a desire to re-examine and re-assess our past, our present and our future expectations regarding healthcare, education, economics, employment, governance and politics, public safety, systems of justice, and social equity.

Challenges to the status quo from society's activists, though sometimes uncomfortable, can suggest changes to help repair the disfunction of contemporary anomalies as well as entrenched historic patterns that disrespect human aspirations, disempower the resourceful, distort values and disrupt progress.

Assessment, in contrast to ideologically or emotionally-driven activism, challenges our societal or personal status quo by introducing a formal fundamentals-based process that is traditionally familiar yet can and should be continually evolving. At its best, assessment helps us to systematically evaluate past performance and proactively aim for a better future. Assessment can be embedded in activities or interstitially placed at milestones, and might be encountered at any point during one's lifetime of effort.

Assessment might be formal or informal, objective or not, anecdotal or quantitative, estimated or precise. Whatever its process, assessment can be a vital part of lifelong growth and learning.

Big data intrudes into our lives, our routines, our every actions, placing us in the crosshairs of data-driven assessment processes, sometimes for our benefit, sometimes perhaps not. We deserve to know that every assessment activity is the very best we can achieve for society and ourselves.

Assessment...

• offers an opportunity for someone to demonstrate knowledge and skills.
• provides personal empowerment backed by evidence regarding what an individual might achieve.
• provides universally-recognized credentials that may be required for particular social tasks.
• can force someone to reflect, appraise, and perhaps re-prioritize.
• encourages reconnoitering of one's current bearings, possibly motivating change in direction or even complete remapping to a new route to get to where one wants to be.
• may suggest seeking additional resources (family, friends, mentors, time, money, education) for help with tasks to reach one's goals.
• provides objective insight into what is worth holding on to, e.g. particular beliefs, goals, values, knowledge, or skills. Also offers clues about what can be put aside, e.g. inessentials or distractions.

Click here for New Jersey education activist Julie Larrea Borst 's op-ed that addresses 2020-21's challenges in education in New Jersey, and argues against standardized assessment.

The following reflection was inspired by the above-cited op-ed, and also is based on this website creator's second-career experience in education administration, teaching, and work as a test developer for standardized tests. The following reflective essay attempts to quite broadly address notions of learning and assessment.

Storytelling and apprenticeship are ages-old uniquely human strategies to convey knowledge, experience, and wisdom. So, how did much of contemporary education devolve to sage-on-the-stage lecturing and textbooks which are one-way, that rely on lessons that are sliding toward obsolescence, and rarely cross-connect across the disciplines in a student's courseload? Combine the above enigma with ubiquitous and intrusive one-size-fits-all testing, then add assorted other archaic demands that make teaching and learning a 24 x 7 ordeal. The result is an anachronistic classroom that is wasteful of teacher creativity and most students' time and energy, that will likely fail in the task of motivating lifelong learners.

Considering the student as a 21st century 'product' needing a responsive and agile development process, the education establishment's predeterminate process can seem seriously ineffective, since it barely differentiates among learners, thereby neglecting education's responsibility to thoroughly and efficiently satisfy each individual's actual learning needs.

Education ideally would seamlessly integrate learning with just-in-time assessment that informs all stakeholders, and adds NO extra burden for students and for teachers. Both historic and modern assessments in a wide range of industries and applications have been so devised as to integrate assessment into the workplace's primary activities, with the assessment part rooted in reliable, well-formulated, carefully vetted, data-generating investigative questions. Such assessments, interleaved non-invasively using robust scientific or design methodology, can immediately detect and isolate deficiencies that require further attention. If incorporated into precious developmental years dedicated to a student's formal education, such assessments could help assure a rapid non-tedious learning path that would effectively propel all individuals toward next steps, chapters, units, assignments, projects and ultimately, to desired learning outcomes.

Here are some anecdotal instances of assessment strategies and consequences:

• Reporting of results of many standardized tests is not timely enough to impact current teaching and learning, which seems inconsistent with overall education needs.
• Education that is unable to interleave assessment with instruction will miss the opportunity to truly empower both teaching and learning.
• A workplace hiring practice that psychologically tests candidates might only compare results with a select group of current employees, and consequently might not align hiring with pursuit of the organization's overall goals.
• An employment policy periodically cuts 7% of the workforce under the assumption that hiring is complex and often faulty, so it is easier to fix this later after an opportunity for on-the-job evaluations.
• A woefully neglectful workplace practice of terminating employees with nearly no warning and no transparency, supposedly prioritizing institutional proprietary integrity, ignores the complexity of employment relationships. Was there an assessment process articulated and even in place? To no one's benefit, 'shock and awe' dismissal 'burns bridges' by failing to transition the employee and remaining assets of the institution toward the future.

  Click here for additional LINKS to resources on assessment

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