ABSTRACT
Assessment has become an activity where the stakes are high. Emphasis on competition always heightens whatever importance is being attached to the grades available. Yet assessment strategies may be based on shaky principles and unclear purposes. Principles and purposes are closely intertwined. Furthermore, the best techniques available are useless if the validity and reliability of the approaches and instruments being used are suspect, and this applies as much to informal assessment as it does to formal means. If a teacher concluded, without checking, that a pupil must have understood the point being made, as he had just smiled, then this might turn out to be an invalid assessment. Children smile for different reasons, including both comprehension and bewilderment.
