ABSTRACT
Assessment has become a word that evokes panic on the part of students afraid they will not meet a set of external standards, disgust on the part of teachers claiming to lose valuable instructional time due to administering excessive numbers of assessments, and frustration on the part of the public hoping that schooling meets its intentions. While all three sets of parties have legitimate arguments against the notion of assessment, arguments that have become increasingly politicized, the views fail to acknowledge a key fundamental of teaching: teachers and students must know whether students are able to do what they are being taught to do. Often overlooked in this arena is teacher performance; that is, whether teachers are employing instructional strategies that bring about student learning. Anyone who has ever taught a language knows that just because students are able to perform linguistic tasks at a sentence level in the controlled environment of a classroom, does not necessarily mean that those same students can perform in more complex environments. The corollary is also true: just because teachers bring in reading materials and then ask students questions about the materials, does not mean that students are developing sophisticated comprehension abilities.
