This statement, formerly known as Framing Statements on Assessment, was updated in October 2018 with the new title, Literacy Assessment: Definitions, Principles, and Practices.

Originally developed as a Revised Report of the Assessment and Testing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004, revised October 2018

OVERVIEW 

An NCTE working committee was charged with reviewing the 2004 position statement “Framing Statements on Assessment.” The 2018 NCTE Executive Committee Subcommittee on Position Statement Review observed that “The language feels dated in this statement, and assessment challenges have increased since 2004. Recommend revision.”

We agreed that the 2004 position statement needed revision, and for three reasons: (1) it included information and advocacy on issues other than literacy assessment, so it wasn’t fully focused on literacy assessment; (2) it needed to be updated to include practices like machine scoring of student work; and (3) it wasn’t designed for multiple audiences.

The dominant points in the new statement, as the preface articulates, include:

The National Council of Teachers of English believes that literacy assessment is an integral part of literacy teaching and learning; that literacy assessment contributes to the conditions for literacy teaching and learning; and that professional knowledge about literacy assessment is a critical component of a literacy teacher’s development and practice.

They also include a set of principles:

• Literacy assessment is a social process, not a technical activity. Accordingly, all student texts are assessed by knowledgeable humans.
• Literacy assessments always assume a classroom learning context; such assessments help stakeholders focus on strengths, areas of concern, goals for improvement, and actions to be taken. The assessment of literacy development and/or achievement therefore does not rely solely on standardized tests, which are especially disruptive to instruction.
• Literacy assessment is meaningful to the learner.
• Literacy assessment includes more than cognitive activities; it also includes a range of practices and perceptions, including beliefs about literacy, dispositions toward literacy, and self-efficacy regarding literacy.
• Literacy assessments are valid only to the extent that they help students learn.
• Literacy assessment is purposeful; therefore, assessments designed for one purpose—for example, program assessment—are not used for another—for example, individual assessment.
• Literacy assessment practices embrace several kinds of diversity, including diversity in languages, in learning styles, and in rates and routes of learning.
• Literacy assessment is varied and includes multiple measures of different domains, including processes, texts, and reflection. Accordingly, no single measure informs literacy instruction.

THE STATEMENT

The National Council of Teachers of English believes that literacy assessment is an integral part of literacy teaching and learning; that literacy assessment contributes to the conditions for literacy teaching and learning; and that professional knowledge about literacy assessment is a critical component of a literacy teacher’s development and practice.

DEFINITIONS

• Literacy refers to the practices of engaging—creating, consuming, and critiquing–with all kinds of multimodal texts.
• Literacy assessment refers to decision-making processes resulting in an examination of students’ performance on literacy tasks as described above; literacy assessments, which include all aspects of such assessments, range from formative response to student writing to the design of higher-stakes assessments.

PRINCIPLES OF LITERACY ASSESSMENT

• Literacy assessment is a social process, not a technical activity. Accordingly, all student texts are assessed by knowledgeable humans.
• Literacy assessments always assume a classroom learning context; such assessments help stakeholders focus on strengths, areas of concern, goals for improvement, and actions to be taken. The assessment of literacy development and/or achievement therefore does not rely solely on standardized tests, which are especially disruptive to instruction.
• Literacy assessment is meaningful to the learner.
• Literacy assessment includes more than cognitive activities; it also includes a range of practices and perceptions, including beliefs about literacy, dispositions toward literacy, and self-efficacy regarding literacy.
• Literacy assessments are valid only to the extent that they help students learn.
• Literacy assessment is purposeful; therefore, assessments designed for one purpose—for example, program assessment—are not used for another—for example, individual assessment.
• Literacy assessment practices embrace several kinds of diversity, including diversity in languages, in learning styles, and in rates and routes of learning.
• Literacy assessment is varied and includes multiple measures of different domains, including processes, texts, and reflection. Accordingly, no single measure informs literacy instruction.

TEACHER KNOWLEDGE AS FUNDAMENTAL TO LITERACY ASSESSMENT

• Literacy assessment taps teacher knowledge.
• Teachers perform many literacy assessment tasks, including administering assessments and analyzing and interpreting various forms of assessment data, collected and employed for both formative and summative purposes. Teachers use these data to learn how students are progressing as lifetime literacy learners; to consider what kinds of support and instruction students need in order to continue developing; and to select, design, and implement pedagogies providing such support and direction.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT PRACTICES

• Teachers and schools select and create purpose-driven site-specific assessments.
• Literacy assessment provides students with feedback and teachers with information regarding next steps in the learning progression.
• Students engage in literacy assessment as self-reflective literacy learners. Literacy reflective practices include an understanding and appreciation of literacy assessment, of why it’s important, and of how it works, thus contributing to student agency. Teachers help students become self-reflective; in this process, students develop reflective habits of mind, enhancing their learning in literacy classrooms, in classrooms in other disciplines, and, later, in the workplace.
• Students participate in literacy assessment, for example, monitoring and assessing their own learning, often with guidance, and engaging in or leading learning conferences about their work.
• Parents are knowledgeable about and involved in literacy assessment processes for their children and their school, for example, by preparing their children for learning, by advocating for their children as learners, and by participating in ongoing assessment conversations about their children’s learning.

LARGE-SCALE, STANDARDIZED, HIGH-STAKES LITERACY ASSESSMENT

• Large-scale, standardized, high-stake literacy assessments, especially normative tests, can distort student development and achievement: often, they are misaligned with literacy standards and/or with a given school’s curricular outcomes. In addition, they are often misused: although they are not designed for diagnostic purposes, they are often used for such purposes, thus violating an important principle of literacy assessment regarding purposefulness.
• The scope of standardized literacy assessments is narrow; literacy teachers may consult such assessments, but they are not constrained by them.
• Schools and their stakeholders are knowledgeable about assessment data, especially what assessment data can and cannot tell us about learning.

STATEMENT AUTHORS

This document was revised by an NCTE working committee comprising the following:

• Kathleen Blake Yancey, Chair; Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
• Becky McCraw, Goucher Elementary School, Gaffney, SC
• Scott Filkins, Central High School, Champaign, IL

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.