The problems of evaluation in our school education are not limited to agreement on its concept or the nature of its philosophy and tests, but extend to more serious and fundamental areas, which are the inadequacy of its factors and executive plans. Let us address some of the daily problems that are felt in this regard.
A- Weak competencies of the relevant parties to conduct evaluation in school education:
As a directed school process, evaluation requires the availability of procedural competencies, the most important of which are the following:
• Specialized academic competence.
• Psychological competence: The teacher’s knowledge of psychology, educational psychology, and the characteristics of his students qualifies him to choose and develop tests that are in harmony with their abilities and desires and are appropriate in terms of language and perception for the stage of development in which they live and for the needs and interests of the stage that preoccupy them.
• Specialized theoretical and applied evaluation competence. This evaluation competence includes other sub-competencies such as:
– Knowledge of the philosophy and objectives of evaluation in local education.
– Knowledge of the types of tests and tools available to evaluate achievement.
– Practical skill in developing and managing these tests and tools.
– The ability to issue appropriate evaluation judgments, and adopt appropriate methods to communicate with the parties concerned with evaluating achievement to raise recommendations and provide them with the required reports.
• Moral competence: Evaluation requires ethical behavioral principles and specifications, the most important of which are: objectivity, commitment, avoiding corruption, interest, and a keen sense of the importance of national education in developing the nation’s generations for its preferred productive personalities..
B- Limited types of evaluation practiced in school education:
Let’s take another problem this time related to the types of evaluation practiced in school education. As is known, evaluation and its tests are routinely conducted after teaching several curriculum subjects or after a period of time has passed since the start of school education, such as a month or two or a semester. But is the scientific evaluation of achievement only done through this narrow practice in its type and quantity? Of course not, because constructive school evaluation begins before students begin learning and ends after they have achieved it, i.e. it deals with three main types of evaluation, which are:
1- Analytical evaluation:
Analytical evaluation is usually conducted before the start of teaching and generally aims to determine the abilities and needs of individual students for new learning. The prerequisite tests that reveal the extent of students’ readiness to learn, and then the subject tests that determine the extent of their previous knowledge of the subject of this learning, are important examples of analytical assessment.
In some constructive cases, however, the teacher may adopt additional types of analytical assessment, such as: psychological assessment that addresses the students’ various personal and intelligence characteristics, educational assessment that is concerned with analyzing the students’ competencies in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, then the educational data for the general/specific objectives of the curriculum, school and family, and finally human assessment or analysis of the demographic composition of students and the school and local community.
The analytical assessment results in the teacher’s understanding of the nature and adequacy of the various learning factors, in order to then work on addressing what is necessary in them and raising their general productive eligibility for the new achievement.
2- Formative interim assessment:
This assessment is conducted while students are acquiring the subject matter, and aims at two important things: determining the adequacy of the learning expected from the students and then correcting what is necessary in it or what is necessary in the factors that produce it. Oral questions, interviews, structured and fleeting observations, and tests conducted during teaching, such as monthly, weekly, and short tests usually at the beginning of the class, are the prevailing means of current assessment.
3- Final overall assessment:
This assessment occurs at the last stage of learning or teaching, and through it the teacher learns about the general adequacy of the students’ achievement, which naturally leads to the granting of what are called qualitative grades or ranks.
The final overall assessment results in the promotion of students to higher levels of achievement, and the retention of some of them at the same level of learning and achievement.
C- The unorganized application of tests and evaluation in school education:
What often happens in our local school education is the adoption of a few short or long essay questions, weak in their language and developmental suitability, then administering them to students, correcting their answers, and explaining their adequacy afterwards as we wish – according to our own circumstances of failing or promoting some, personal knowledge, and side and home social or non-social recommendation cards for the family… and so on until the evaluation judgments end with distorted qualitative estimates that do not express the true achievement of individual students and are never able to direct any educational school phenomenon, including the learning of the students themselves. Hence, our educational evaluation remains deficient and useless, and our judgments are lame and negatively able to direct any phenomenon or process related to school education.
In order to shift from the above unorganized practices of evaluation in education to other purposeful ones directed towards achievement and school education in general, we propose adopting a procedural plan of ten consecutive steps as follows:
1- Determining the objectives of evaluation of achievement:
The objectives are as important for evaluating achievement as planning for evaluation itself. Without objectives, the teacher’s behavior lacks something clear that it aims for or is directly concerned with achieving. It bends at the first difficulty, or deviates and branches out according to the nature of personal desires and emerging side events. Hence, in reality, the teacher’s knowledge of the objectives gives him the ability to focus or what we call the ability to “correct”.
2- Determining and analyzing the backgrounds of individual students includes:
• Determining the prevailing achievement abilities among students, whether low, normal or superior, in order to represent the test in general for these abilities.
• Determining the exceptional achievement abilities, positively or negatively, for some students, i.e. identifying the very low and very superior students in their achievement of the subject matter, in order to respond to each case with appropriate learning and teaching.
• Identifying students who are expected to cause behavioral or organizational problems during taking the test, such as side talk, cheating attempts, and resisting instructions, to adopt some organizational alternatives and constructive control methods for their achievement.
• Identifying students who have medical or physical disabilities, whether visual, auditory, or motor, that partially prevent them from performing the test normally, and therefore need some kind of assistance during that.
• Identifying students who suffer from problems in their family life, to overcome them and respond to their requirements before preparing them for the test and submitting them to it.
3- Identifying the types and areas of learning in which the students will be tested:
The teacher must, at this planning stage for his tests, accurately identify the types and areas of learning in which he will test the students’ adequacy of achievement, where we suggest the following:
• Reviewing the prescribed study material that the students learned under his guidance and supervision, and initially identifying during that the areas that he taught completely, the others partially, and the third that he neglected intentionally or unintentionally.
• Writing a list of the types of knowledge, concepts and experiences that students have learned during their study of the subject. The teacher’s writing here is brief to save time and effort.
4- Determine the types of data required to assess achievement.
The teacher’s knowledge of the objectives of the assessment and the types and areas of learning that students will be tested in helps him directly in identifying the identity of the data that he is required to collect for the assessment. This data is used to determine the achievement competencies of individual students, compare them with each other and guide their learning. Then, statistical quantitative data for their production through tests is often appropriate in this case.
5- Choosing the criteria and conditions of achievement adequacy:
The importance of achievement criteria and conditions is due to their direct use in analyzing the collected data and identifying through them the adequacy of students’ learning and judging its value for their growth or future.
In general, whatever the nature of the standards and achievement conditions, quantitative or qualitative, they fall into two main categories: general absolute standards, which all students must improve their achievement, and then comparative relative standards, which compare students’ achievement with each other, or with peers of the same age or academic level.
6- Review the test hall to verify its eligibility.
7- Review the time period available for the test to detail it – lengthen or shorten its questions based on it.
8- Determine the appropriate assessment methods to collect the required achievement data.
9- Determine the methods of analyzing and interpreting data:
The most important current methods are the following:
• Graphs.
• Measures of central tendency such as the mean, arithmetic range, and median.
• Measures of dispersion such as the arithmetic range, standard deviation, and quartile deviation.
• Normal and skewed curves.
• Relative position scales for marks such as the nine-point, percentile, and decimal marks, and the statistical (z) and (t) marks.
• Relationship scales such as the various correlation coefficients.
10- Judging the value of achievement and reporting the results to the relevant parties:
The teacher can now, as a result of the analysis and interpretation of achievement marks, give the students the qualitative assessment they deserve for their answers. These assessments are in the form of ranks: such as first and second.. or normal assessments in the form of letters: A, B, C.. or simply giving them a general leave for the sufficiency of their achievement represented by the word: Pass or Fail.
As for reporting the evaluation results to the relevant school and family parties, it may take various forms, including direct oral through personal conversation, or indirectly by telephone or audio recording, or written in the form of official forms, memos, or general comments and notes usually from the subject teacher.
D- Proposed therapeutic solutions to overcome our evaluation problems:
In the midst of the difficulties and multiple problems we face in the field of educational evaluation in general and rationalizing students’ learning or achievement in particular, what should we do then? And how do we transform our educational evaluation and then our school education from its current useful states to others that are more beneficial and better? The therapeutic/developmental solutions and prescriptions are multiple, including:
1- Start by focusing on education as a real procedural means to produce our cadres and basic social competencies such as the responsible father, the caring mother, the productive worker, the righteous ruler, the creative scholar, the faithful educator, and the zealous soldier who protects his society, culture, and land.
2- Start by creating a specialization (main or minor) in educational evaluation in our higher institutes and educational colleges.
3- Start by creating effective educational evaluation devices in the Arab Ministries of Education or Knowledge, which qualify school cadres theoretically and practically on the various competencies to plan and implement evaluation and strategies for benefiting from its results later in directing school and family education.
4- Starting to establish independent and qualified private institutions, specializing in educational evaluation in various or some of its fields, such as planning evaluation, developing and standardizing tests, and training on the various competencies required for local school education.
5- Immediately start filling the urgent evaluation needs of school cadres, through purposeful procedural programs from institutes, colleges, and possible useful official or private entities.
6- Start establishing periodicals (newspapers, magazines, and bulletins) specialized in educational evaluation and its theoretical and field studies to disseminate useful knowledge for this field in particular and directed to those working in it in general.
Evaluation reforms do not advance much with the visions of theoretical offices, or the narrow interests of some entities and individuals. Moreover, the practical competencies of evaluation are only capable of being produced by parallel field competencies, capable of experiencing them in knowledge and practice. Conversely, weakness does not treat weakness, and inadequacy does not lead to overcoming the shortcomings of reality. If we do not start a serious and qualified process to treat our evaluation/educational diseases, starting with changing some concepts and practices of tests and evaluation and ending with renewing their various factors and processes, then we will not reach the healthy society that we all aspire to in the future.