Educative achievement assessment and its relation with education quality

Abstract

In this paper we will outline the current situation of national and international assessment of learning achievement. National and international assessment started as strategy to have an understanding of the level of progress of student’s skills, especially in mathematics and language. Later, assessment in science and writing was added, and currently, it includes civic skills.
Results of current international assessment, in which most first world countries and some Latin American countries take part, point out what we already knew: learning standards of Latin American students are far below those of European and Asian students.
The importance that many countries give to the educative system assessment, regarding the student’s learning process, does not match the use they give to the results concerning the definition of educative policies that seek an improvement in educational quality.
Scarce application can be a consequence of the fact that results are so poor that they jeopardize the future of the administrations. In many cases, they prefer not to disclose the results. Another cause is that technical teams do not meet the requirements to perform reasonable assessment. And we should not forget that constant changes in ministries affect the sustainability of assessment projects.
Disclosure of results through mass media usually affects teachers in a negative way. They feel blamed and stigmatized by society. Knowing the critical issues of educative systems is too important for us to discard this tool that, used correctly, can become the main strategy in the improvement of educative quality.