Evaluation of pupils is one of the most difficult tasks confronting the school principal and the teaching staff. There are a number of reasons why this is true. Tradition has left an almost indelible imprint upon the thinking of members of the teaching profession as well as upon the thinking of laymen, with respect to the nature and scope of pupil evaluation. With few exceptions, evaluation is viewed narrowly and in terms of a school curriculum that has long since ceased to meet the demands of children. Related to this is the fact that education today is a complex matter and involves a number of goals and outcomes. A third consideration of which perplexes educators in the difficulty of assessing the many intangible aspects of learning in the realms of social behavior, emotional development and esthetic tastes.
Evaluation, as most parents think of it, consists of giving pupils marks for the traditional subjects in the curriculum. In fact, parents commonly do not come into the picture as far as evaluation is concerned until the last phase of the appraisal process is reached. This often takes the form of signing a report cards and depending upon the nature of the report, interviewing the teacher or the school principal. Modern educators view evaluation more broadly than this. They consider evaluation to be any attempt to take stocks of the school’s success in achieving its objectives whether the participants are staff members or pupils or both. Moreover, they are concerned with group evaluation as well as with the appraisal of the progress of individual pupils.
The conscientious teacher is primarily interested in pupils progressing at a rate consistent with their ability. He is anxious that each individual pupil shall develop as a person, which he shall not merely forge ahead in traditional subject matter and skills at the expense, perhaps, of equally fundamental knowledge and skills in democratic living and social competence. Since good standardized tests have not been developed in this country for some of the more tangible learning areas of learning, the modern teacher has to resort too many ingenious methods to appraise pupil progress as a whole. The refinement commonly sought through grading or school marks is seldom achieved in these other measuring schemes. Marks are therefore only one form of evaluation, however important they may seem to parents.
Despite the fact that educators and parents views the problems of pupil evaluation quite differently, experience has shown that the wise principal does not turn a deaf ear to the requests of parents when introducing new appraisal procedures and policies. This does not mean that the principals and teachers accept uncritically the point of view of laymen on matters that are largely professional, but it does mean that the approach to educational problem is best made by starting where most people are. The majority of parents are well acquainted with traditional marking arrangements. They know examinations are like, and they have had papers read by teachers and returned to them numerical grades on them. They have stood at the head or the bottom of the class, or somewhere in between, and know the weight attached to such “standing.”
By: Celia I. Sarmiento | Lamao Elementary School | Limay, Bataan
