The right assessment for the right purpose.

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

Educators should use a diverse array of assessment tools ,and methods to measure/assess our students. Assessments have different functions - assessments are typically designed to measure specific elements of learning—e.g., the level of knowledge a student already has about the concept or skill the teacher is planning to teach , or what they have learnt from recent learning opportunities.  Ideally, assessments  are used to identify individual student weaknesses and strengths so that educators can provide the most appropriate educational programmes. 

Are we using the right assessments to give us the most relevant information on our students to help us provide the most appropriate educational programmes? 

Do our students know what we want them to do, and how to do it ?

Are we  doing too much testing and not  enough teaching?

Everytime we ask a student a questions it is a form of testing, unless we have already given lots of input first.