Assessing Student Learning: Beyond Cumulative Exams

Tim Quinn
Chief Academic Officer and Dean of Faculty
Miss Porter’s School

There are definitely better ways to assess student learning than cumulative exams.  However, I will acknowledge that this does depend on what you are trying to assess.  Cumulative exams can assess knowledge retention; the problem is that they often simply assess knowledge retained from the previous few nights’ cramming (i.e. knowledge that will soon be lost).  This is not to say that knowledge doesn’t matter.  It does.  People need to know things, but it is difficult for us to truly say what particular things they should know.  

I stopped giving reading quizzes long ago because I realized I was assessing whether students remembered four particular things from a text that contained countless important bits of information.  They could have known plenty, but if they forgot two of the four details I had decided to ask them about, they failed.  That is clearly not an accurate assessment of knowledge retention. 

​Students, like all people, need the particular knowledge that is useful in service of some desired end.  The best assessments provide students with a genuine performance task that matters to them and that may even impact the world.  Completing such a performance task will undoubtedly require knowledge, but more importantly it will necessitate the transfer of that knowledge and associated skills to a new, authentic context.  Only then can one truly assess whether or not a student has mastered the material for a class. 

It’s true that traditional cumulative exams can assess things beyond knowledge retention.  There is no doubt that even a well-crafted multiple choice question can require analytical and critical thinking skills.  However, why not assess those same skills through projects that require additional skills such as creativity and communication – projects that allow for student voice and choice, and projects that can be presented to an audience so that the learning can be shared and celebrated? Some will answer that we need to give cumulative exams in high school to prepare students for cumulative exams in college. But the lack of pedagogical sophistication students may encounter in college is no justification to engage in mediocre educational practices in our schools.

Just because there are better ways to assess than cumulative exams does not mean that there is no place for quizzes and tests in a class.  These tools can be helpful as part of the learning process, but they should never be the culmination or the end product.  

In their professional lives our students will take few, if any, exams, while engaging in project after project after project. If you must, give quizzes and tests to help build mental muscle, but please finish your class by allowing students to put those muscles to use in a more meaningful way.