The vision of quality education and to produce globally competitive learners are the most reason of continuous study of educators. They patiently studies the result of the achievement rate of students and  persistently think of new ways to improve the quality of education. One of them is Richard J. Stiggins, he compiled a set of guiding principles that would help the teaching-learning process.

Guiding Principle 1: Assessments require clear thinking and effective communication. Those who develop and use high quality assessments must share a highly refined focus. They must be clear thinkers, capable of communicating effectively, both to those being assessed and those who must understand the assessment results.

Guiding Principle 2: Classroom assessment is the key. Teachers direct the assessments that

determine what students learn and how those students feel about the learning. Nearly all of the

assessment events that take place in students’ lives happen at the behest of their teachers.

Guiding Principle 3: Students are assessment users. Students are the most important users of assessment results. Students are consumers of assessment results – right from the time students arrive at school, they look at their teachers for evidence of success. If that early evidence

suggests they are succeeding, what begins to grow in them is a sense of hopefulness and an

expectation of more success in the future.

Guiding Principle 4: Clear and appropriate targets are essential. The quality of any assessment depends first and foremost on the clarity and appropriateness of our definition of the achievement target to be assessed.

Guiding Principle 5: High quality assessment is a must. High quality assessment is essential

in all assessment contacts. Sound assessments must satisfy five specific quality standards: 1)

clear targets; 2) focused purpose; 3) proper method; 4) sound sampling; and 5) accurate

assessment free of bias and distortion.

Guiding Principle 6: Understand the personal implications. Assessment is an interpersonal activity. The principle has two important dimensions. The first has to do with the important reality of life in classrooms: Students are people and teachers are people, too, and sometimes we like each other and sometimes we don’t. Second, assessment is very complex in that it virtually

always is accompanied by personal anecdotes and personal consequences.

Guiding Principle 7: Assessment as teaching and learning. Assessments and instruction can

be one and the same, if and when we want them to be.

            I hope his guiding principles will contribute our way of teaching.

By: Mary Charlotte R. Bonus | Teacher II | MNHS-Cabcaben | Mariveles, Bataan