But down the hall, another teacher believes the opposite, that it's unethical to include surprise items on a test when students are using a study guide, but fine to weight homework for report card grades. This teacher always takes student effort into account when grading and would never give an A to a student with incomplete work.

In a recent issue of Teaching and Teacher Education, a team of researchers reports that teachers have very inconsistent beliefs about what is fair and unfair in student assessment based on the results of their survey. Teachers were presented with various scenarios and asked to rate the assessment practices as "ethical" or "unethical". The results show that ethics guidelines for assessment are clearly needed for educators, the researchers conclude.

"Results showed strong agreement among the educators on fewer than half of the scenarios presented in this study," the authors report. "These findings suggest that assessment is currently an educational realm without professional consensus."

The researchers used a standard of 80% rating as ethical or unethical to identify areas of high agreement among teachers on the assessment scenarios presented in the survey.

Key areas of disagreement
In the survey, teachers disagreed most about:

• weighting homework in determining report grades (57% ethical, 43% unethical);
• giving a student an A if he or she had mastered the course objectives but had not completed all the homework assignments (37% ethical, 63% unethical);
• using surprise test items that are not in a study guide (34% ethical, 66% unethical);
• only addressing student strengths in report cards (41% ethical, 59% unethical), and
• grading essay tests while knowing the identities of student writers (48% ethical, 52% unethical).

View recent issues of Educational Research Newsletter.

Teachers largely agreed that using many forms of assessment in the classroom is ethical (99%), that relying on one form of assessment is unethical (85%) and that relying on a very small number of assessments for determining grades is unethical (78%).

In other areas of agreement, teachers rated:

• lowering a report card grade for disruptive behavior as unethical (85%),
• considering student effort when determining grades as ethical (85%) and
• lowering a grade for late work as ethical (86%).

The web-based, 36-item survey was taken by educators in the graduate and undergraduate programs at two major southern US universities. There were 169 respondents, 114 pre-service and 55 in-service. The 36 items covered topics in seven categories: Standardized test preparation, standardized test administration, multiple assessment opportunities, communication about grading, grading practices, bias and confidentiality.

Teachers were in greater agreement over items related to communicating about grades, confidentiality and multiple assessment opportunities, and were in less agreement over items related to bias and grading practices.

Pre-service teachers were more likely to rate the following practice as ethical: A teacher creates learning activities with specific math problems that are included in the annual achievement test. In-service teachers were more likely to rate the practice as unethical. Otherwise there were few differences between the two groups.

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Do no harm
Stressing the importance of developing guiding principles and an ethics framework for educators, researchers reviewed previous research and found two general principles that could provide a starting point for developing ethics guidelines. These two principles are: "do no harm" and "avoid score pollution."

"Do no harm" focuses on the importance of protecting the rights of individuals affected by an evaluation, the authors write. "Fairness (or protection of student rights) is a general principle that no one contests in the abstract," they write. "However, thinking about causing harm focuses the discussion at the level of the implications of everyday practice. Educators must be well versed in the potential impact of the practices they use because their assessment and evaluation may have a variety of unintended consequences for their students.

"For example, a teacher who uses surprise items on a test that did not appear on the study guide may do harm by breaking the implicit bond of trust between teacher and student. A teacher who passes out tests from highest grade to lowest may do harm by breaching confidentiality. Such actions imply lack of respect for student rights and needs."

Avoid score pollution
The other principle, "avoid score pollution", is based on the premise that any practice that improves test performance without increasing actual mastery of content produces score pollution. Practicing before a test with actual test content would produce score pollution, the authors write, and so would modifying grades or scores because of student effort, lateness or behavior problems.

In their survey responses, teachers showed more agreement on items that related to the "do no harm" principle than on the items that related to "avoid score pollution."

As a working principle, the authors propose using a definition of ethical behavior as "acting based on one's judgment of an obligation-- a duty by virtue of a relationship with a person, persons, or social institution."

Schools and districts should encourage conversations about ethical issues in assessment, and teacher training programs should address ethics issues in courses on instruction and assessment, the researchers say. Disagreement among teachers on items related to score pollution indicates that classroom grading should be especially highlighted in discussions on ethics. Even with guidelines, however, there will always be the need for educators to exercise judgment. "Educators must be given the space, autonomy, and support to learn to use their judgment," the authors write.

"Ethics in classroom assessment practices: Issues and attitudes," by Susan Green, Robert Johnson et. al. Teaching and Teacher Education, October 2007, Volume 23, Issue 7, pp. 999-1011.

Published in ERN October 2007 Volume 20 Number 7
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Reader Comments
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I find it striking that two of the comments associated with this article claim there are no reasons to hold students to deadlines. Life is full of deadlines that -if ignored - have real consequences. As a high school Principal, I often see students lose opportunities for college scholarships simply because they didn't meet the deadline. As adults, if we miss the deadline on paying our bills, our electricity gets cut off or our car gets repossessed. Jobs are lost, late fees are added (even by the IRS), interest rates are doubled on credit cards... all because deadlines are missed.

I agree that the emphasis on deadlines can be overdone by a tyrannical teacher, but meeting deadlines is a necessary life skill, and as such could be considered as more important to learn than the actual subject matter being studied.
David Couchman
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What is the purpose of assessment? As an educator, I believe the purpose of assessment is two-fold, one to inform instructor and two, to assess the students knowledge of material taught.

I do not believe we should have anything on a test as a surprise or to trick them into making a mistake! I believe teachers need to look at assessment more to inform their instruction or to find out what needs to be re-taught in order for our students to be successful in school.
Nilah Lyver
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Having worked in in industry for a number of years I realized that very few deadlines exist for the majority of workers. Why would we penalize a student for handing something in late - I think its mostly because it is an inconvenience for the teacher.

I tend to increasingly look for ways of making my courses deadline-free (It's not possible)

As for testing, what does my customer expect their grade to be (student and parent), what does my employer expect my class grades to be and how do I use that information to my advantage in stimulating learning?
Peter Renders
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The sole purpose of assessment is to measure achievement for the learner and to inform instruction. The research is very clear about the so called "surprise" assessment. It is unethical, what disappoints me is that the Ed. Research Newsletter is printing the survey without connoting what the actual research states.

We have long ago moved from making sure students are taught on information tested and that information tested has been taught. I would appreciate rather than allowing an article to be left hanging in the air about surprise questions as an either -or, that the Newsletter would state what the truth about best practices for assessment states at the end of any type of article that is a survey.

It appears the Newsletter is printing the survey to confuse educators. Good educators know what the research practices are, so let's go Ed. Newsletter and change your format to reflect the real research please, don't leave people hanging on a survey.
Falcon
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Assessment needs to be in many forms from standardized to authentic, paper and pencil to exhibition, 1:1 conversations to portfolio/student lead conferencing. As for grading - when does the IRS tell us that we missed the deadline so don't bother handing in our taxes? Students should not be penalized because they needed more time to turn a completed assignment in. They should also not be penalized for deadbeat parents who don't monitor homework completion.
Bill Deno
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As a newcomer to this forum (and a Canadian educator), it strikes me that assessment as described in the article and responses has been limited to its summative form. What about formative assessments? If assessment can (should) be used as an instructional tool rather than solely as an evaluative tool, many of the actions described as unethical would have great value in terms of effective learning and teaching.
Dr. Alex Mckay
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