Assessmet

Assessment is a pretty complicated topic for teachers because they need a constructive way to find out if their students are getting the information taught to them. The most feasible, or common, way is to hand out formal end of unit tests and then put it all together on the final exam. Most kids can handle that method, but there are always going to be a few kids who you know, no matter how much they study, they probably won't measure up to the rest of the class.
I was one of the kids who struggled with formal tests because I didn't know how to manage my time while taking one. If I was stuck on a question in the middle of the test, I sat there and stared at it and didn't know to skip it and go back to it at the end. Also, even if I started studying a week before the test, I was very inconsistent with the facts I remembered and the facts that I forgot, so I got in to the habit of cramming everything the night before the test so that it would be that much fresher in my mind. (I even crammed for the SAT). Depending on the topic, I performed better on some tests than others which is bound to happen, but I found it really frustrating that I had to come to terms that there were some things that I would never understand no matter how hard I tried. Eventually, I started taking my tests in my resource/study skills room and it gave me more time to take the test, so I felt less pressure to finish quickly and it helped a lot.
In the end, I don't really know how much my teachers had to pull for me so I could move on to the next grade level, but they all knew how hard I worked, and luckily for me, they saw my efforts and passed me each year. When I'm a teacher, I want to try to make assessments based on my students' efforts and not just their performance on a number scale. I also want to try to give projects and assignments that I know my students can actually do on their own because I know that when I was growing up, my mom, and a lot of other students' moms/parents, ended up doing the majority of the work for major projects.