NAEP Reflection

     Throughout my college career I have encountered, worked with, and created numerous different types of assessments. The idea behind assessment is to determine student knowledge based on a certain set of criteria. Some assessments are better able to depict student knowledge than others can even begin to be capable of. I honestly have to say that I think the rubrics we worked with when completing the NAEP project are some of the most difficult to understand and use/implement out of all the assessments I have come across. It was very difficult to decide between the different levels that you were given to grade student work. There was a lot of overlap that made it even harder. The rubrics we looked at were sometimes unclear and hard to understand exactly what it was looking for. 

     This project was a difficult, but also a very valuable learning experience for me. When we struggle with something I believe we take the most out of it because we have the most invested in it. The difficulty in this assignment helped me to truly see how important it is to create accurate assessments to evaluate student work, not only to do the student justice when looking at their hard work, but also for your own sanity. If an assessment is difficult to read and understand than how can we expect it to accurately depict a students work. If we can't figure out how to equally apply it to multiple works then it's not a very accurate scale either. When creating rubrics it is important to be very specific about what you expect from your students in order for them to be able to deliver the result you expect and for them to show you what they are truly capable of. Although this assignment was very trying it was very valuable as well.