Many teachers in many districts have the same reaction to the word assessment.  Mention it, and you could very well elicit a visual cringe.  That’s interesting.

The most oft cited criticism of assessment is that we don’t have time for it.  I don’t really get that.

I can’t say it any better than Grant Wiggins did at ASCD when he was asked the same question.  He responded;

“If you say you don’t have time for this, you assume that the teaching is more important than the learning. Feedback is the key to reaching goals. Saying there’s no time is to confuse causing learning for mentioning stuff.”

Bingo.

Thanks to Purplemattfish for the use of the Flickr image.