ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the diversity and complexity that are the hallmark of today's schools, and on the promises and challenges of language arts assessment. It defines language arts assessment through the lens of successful reading, in terms of evaluating the processes, products, and affective characteristics that mark such reading. The chapter provides an overview of language arts assessment contexts – academic, social, political, and economic – that influence assessment practice. It describes appropriate uses of language arts assessment, and promising assessment practice. The chapter argues that effective and equitable language arts assessments create a robust profile of diverse student readers that integrate cognitive and affective factors and builds upon a rich array of data formative and summative data. It also suggests that students develop as language arts users in varied, important ways. The chapter asserts that assessment should help us understand students' language arts development, including cognition, affect, and conation.
