The Chefs:
Tammy Barcalow
Zan Brixey
Melissa Creech
Bryan Weinert

Topic:  Discuss the difference between assessment and evaluation

To start this week's discussion, Zan provided us with the following definitions from Teacher Help.

assessment
    Although assessment is often used interchangeably with evaluation, it more precisely refers to the process of data gathering that occurs before evaluation takes place. Assessment can be formal (standardized, normed tests) or informal and ongoing (also called authentic assessment).

evaluation
      "The process of testing, appraising, and judging achievement, growth, product, process, or changes in these, frequently through the use of formal and informal tests and techniques" (Theodore L. Harris and Richard E. Hodges, eds., The Literacy Dictionary: The Vocabulary of Reading and Writing, Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1995, p.76). Assessment more generally refers to the data gathering prior to evaluation, which entails judging performance relative to some standard or baseline.
 

Thoughts from the Chefs
on assessment:
    The group agrees that assessment is everything the teacher does that is related to student learning.  It is the plan and procedures we use, the influence that assessment has on our instruction and even the "grade" we give each student.  It is what we do on a day-to-day basis.  It might not be everything we do, but it is the bulk of time.  The charts that we produced last week were our examples of our classroom assessment:  observations, quizzes, tests, rubrics, portfolios, etc.  Melissa describes assessment as being measurable.  We continually take measurements either informally (observations) or formally (tests) as we assess our students.

on evaluation:
    While Zan describes evaluation as the personal way we view the assessment and the personal way we help and communicate with each student during the actual teaching day, Melissa, Tammy and Bryan look at evaluation as stepping back and looking at the whole picture.  Melissa points out that evaluation is not only looking at the assessments, but looking at the things that are not as measurable such as confidence and class participation.  Tammy looks at evaluation as how we look at the assessments and use them to determine the directions of our students and our teaching Bryan went further to say that evaluation is the judgment made about the value, worth, or merit of the actual education taking place.

    Bryan related our major project nicely to this discussion, "part of this course's major project is for us to evaluate the assessments that we are using in our own classes."

    From our communications, we see that assessment and evaluation do not have the same meaning.  Although they do go hand in hand.  For student evaluation to take place, assessment data must be gathered from the student.