Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Appendix XI

“When Is Assessment REALLY Assessment?”

“When Is Assessment REALLY Assessment?” by Cynthia Weatherly, published in The Chris tian Conscience (Vol. 1, No. 9, 1995, pp. 28–32, 50). It can be found on the Internet at http: //www.christianconscience.com.

Why are the new-fangled tests called “assessments”? The answer is shocking! During preparation for a workshop on educational policy in 1982, I was asked by the host organization to prepare a glossary of terms pertaining to my presentation. That request seemed simple enough and a reasonable one, so I set about compiling terms related to Com petency-Based Education (CBE, forerunner of Outcome-Based Education and promulgated by the same man—Bill Spady), our fad-of-the-moment in educational reformation toward illiteracy in Georgia. As I said, the task seemed simple enough. However, while still in the A’s of the alphabet, I developed an overwhelming respect for professional compilers of glossaries. The first word block I encountered was assessment . Sure it was familiar; we all knew it meant “test,” but the longer I struggled to apply that definition to CBE the more elusive assessment’s definition became. The latest word for “test” was “instrument” and that proved easy to explain. But assess ment was a broader term. Assessment was the noun form of the verb “assess.” What did assess actually mean? The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had been in use since its development in the latter 1960s. Had we overlooked a change in emphasis by the Federal level of education implied by the use of the word assessment that could be significant? Receiving no help from my small hill of accumulated state department of education mate rials relating to assessment, I decided to read the instruction manual: Webster’s New World Dictionary. Webster’s clearly stated: assess : 1. to set an estimated value on (property, etc.) for taxation 2. To set the amount of (a tax, fine, damages, etc.) 3. To impose a fine, tax, or special payment on (a person or property) 4. To impose (an amount) as a fine, tax, etc. 5. To estimate or determine the sig

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