Should assessments be personalized?

     As an interesting way to start this week's blog, I thought that you would enjoy the clip from You Tube that demonstrates how standardized testing is so impersonal.  Enjoy!  It is a fun way to show that we need to know the students that we are teaching!  (or in this case testing!) 
     I can't help but notice that this week's topics fall right as we are all wrapping up the year and this wrap up includes many tests being given.  Regents, and final exam weeks are all that we are doing at the MS and HS level right now.  Dr. Tuck has asked us, "After all these years of common schooling, we still have no real way of knowing if students are learning." (Tuck, 2011, Blog.)  I can't help but think of that statement when I see my son and his friends studying for their regents, and my daughter stressing over her first "real" finals.  I started to wonder,  what if assessments were personalized for all students?  What if they could take what they have learned and were given a guideline to what the assessment must include, but they could decide what way they could show the topics that they have learned?  This would be an interesting concept.
     Lisa Delpit delves into this concept when she states, "if we are to invite children into the language of school, we must make school inviting to them." (Delpit, 2002, p.42.)  Wouldn't personalized assessments fall into this category?  Wouldn't we make more authentic assessments if the students had more ownership in their learning? What if we started to give our lessons and taught what the standards dictate that the students must know, but then we let the students reflect upon their learning and get them to pull what they have learned and make the connections between their school lessons to their life lessons? To make this happen though, educators would have to take the time to learn about their students.  Lisa Delpit stresses this by saying, "Furthermore, by not listening, teachers cannot know what students are concerned about, what interests them, or what is happening in their lives." (Delpit, 2002, p.43.) She continues by saying, "Without that knowledge it is difficult to connect the curriculum to anything students find meaningful." (Delpit, 2002, p.43.) If  we do not take the time to learn about our students, then we won't know how much they learn about anything.
     I enjoyed hearing how Patricia Carini references that "each child who comes through the door brings along his or her individuality and so inevitably makes some contribution, welcome or unwelcome, the the variety and the diversity of the class." (Carini, 2001, p. 169.) This clarified for me that here we have all of these individuals, but yet, we make them fit into one form at the end of every year, chapter, etc. We learn about multiple learning styles, which encourages teachers to teach to the style that fits each child the best, yet at the same time, we take that individual learning style and make them all take the same test.
     What if we could combine their learning style with their assessments?  Ken Robinson's video stated "schools kill creativity."  Isn't that what those standardized tests are doing to all of us?  We give up those "fun" lessons, that taught so many children, because we have a test that must be taken at the end of the year.  What about the student who is musically inclined, taking what they learn in History and composing a song about those lessons? Or the student who has a talent for drawing,  getting a chance to interpret the art of an era or actually being allowed to paint something that translates what they feel history has taught them? It really makes you think about the ways that children could interpret what they have learned if they get a chance to really tie this into their strengths.  The students who can ponder what they are learning, and figure out a way, or think through a way to show what they have learned.  As an educator, we would have to have a way of telling the students, that their interests count.
     Would we have to have basic guidelines? Of course, there might be a set of essential questions that the student must answer, however, they can interpret those questions in a way that makes sense to them.  Some students may even choose to take a "traditional test," but imagine the others who want to take what they have learned and show us instead of just bubble in a scantron.
     Carini quotes Havel in her essay as saying, "In the context of the essay, Havel (1992) means that to do the work of understanding we must as people, as humans, create radically different ways of looking at the world and ourselves." (Carini, 2001, p. 169.) This completely backs up how I have been thinking about assessments needing to be revisited and changed.  I have a deep feeling that we will start to see a better way of assessing coming soon, but these new assessments will come with many arguments, and many educators fighting to go back to the test.  Will these new assessments take time to grade, and take us to places that we haven't been before? Yes, but I believe deep down, we will be doing what is the best for the kids.  Good teachers venture out of their safety box when they are teaching and they try new things or new ways to present their lessons, this keeps interest and honestly, makes things fun, so why aren't we able to go outside the box when it comes to assessing?