The compelling subtitle of this 100 page monograph would seem to imply that The Art and Science of Classroom Assessment is, in some way, a groundbreaking book. It is not. It is, however, a very effective summary of the conventional but often overlooked wisdom concerning what teachers can do in the college classroom to grade more effectively. For example, Brookhart reemphasizes the importance of using syllabi to clearly describe course objectives ("achievement targets") and then of designing test vehicles that accurately measure how well students meet these specific objectives.
However, as conventional as this book is, there are many times when Brookhart delivers subtle insights into apparent commonplaces, as when she points out that "for assessment, it is important to emphasize that a student is not demonstrating understanding if the problem is not new to the student. If a chemical reaction problem on a chemistry exam is the same as one that was worked in class, the task is one of recall, no matter how difficult a recall task it may be." (p.11)
The book is perhaps also useful as a concise summary of scholarly materials on grading, and the book's liberal use of "tables" serves this purpose unusually well, often effectively reviewing the scholarship in chart form as a kind of annotated bibliography. For example, "Empirical Studies of Classroom Assessment in College and University Classrooms," (Table 3) lists the studies, the context they investigate, the sample and research method they use, and their findings. A final chapter also includes "Further Resources for Faculty" and an appendix serves as a useful bibliography.
In other cases, the abundant "tables" are essentially teaching tips, summarizing in a very readable format such topics as how to check the appropriateness of an assessment tool, how to write reliable objective exam questions, or how to evaluate cooperative learning assignments.
The book also includes an index that is embarrassingly slight. A chapter entitled "Assessment in the Disciplines" asserts that "achievement goals differ among disciplines and among course levels within disciples" (p. 59) and then proceeds to analyze assessment goals in English and Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences. A chapter entitled "Grade Distributions and Grading Policies" includes an examination of grade inflation and "grade deflation."
The term "classroom assessment" in the title of this book suggests an affinity with two areas of discourse that Brookhart carefully excludes from her purview. The first is outcomes assessment or program evaluation for institutional purposes. The second is familiar to those who know Angelo and Cross's Classroom Assessment Techniques (1988, 2nd edition, 1993). Brookhart acknowledges Angelo and Cross but then distinguishes her work from theirs by saying that they deal with situations where the "assessment is anonymous and the unit of analysis is the class, not the individual students." (p. 5) Those who do not know Angelo and Cross should not be distracted by Brookharts's slighting reference to this invaluable and truly groundbreaking work.
Terry Niehuis,
Western Carolina University