Classroom Assessment

This chapter discussed the importance of teacher assessment and the methods for success. It discussed methods such as testing, observation, and student reflection to assess their mastery of topics and their progress. One section I liked was when the author discussed the importance of teachers adapting their lesson plans with the changing times. I have been in classes in grade school, high school, and even college in which the teacher has been teaching the course for 20 plus years and has never changed their assignments or test questions. There are so many problems with this. One the author states is that in many subjects, the information students are expected to know changes all the time, it is not the same material as it was 20 years ago and we need to grow and adapt to be effective teachers. In my personal experience I have been in classes in which the teachers will not hand back your exams so that they can recycle the questions for the next test, but the students then do not know what questions they got wrong or right and do not learn from it. I have also been in classes in which my peers older siblings had taken the same course years earlier and saved the answers to the test, so their younger counterparts do not even need to learn the material. The text also stated that teachers need to prepare students for standardized tests, but not base the curriculum around them. My question would be, how can a teacher make sure their students are adequately prepared, without teaching exactly what will be on the test?