Demystifying Assessment Leadership: A Review

This article shows the importance of assessment in school and how a school leader plays active role in monitoring the assessment carried out in school to improve learning situation in classes. In this article, assessment leadership is identified as leadership of “planned assessment systems” in which the beneficiaries of assessment are clearly defined; the uses of the assessment information are real, tangible and valued by the users; and the assessments are conducted in an efficient manner (ensuring, for example, that redundant practices are not reducing the time available for instruction). The writers pointed out that assessment leadership is one of the most significant demands on instructional leadership in schools and that increasing attention is being devoted to the focus on learningas the central goal of instructional leadership. Noonan & Renihan also added that there has been a shift in emphasis from the supervision of teaching to the supervision of learning as the nexus of school leadership activity (Glickman, 2002; Stoll et al., 2002) and many researches have been carried out on the related curriculum leadership and assessment leadership implications for the principal’s instructional leadership role.

The writers pointed out that assessment reform is not concerned solely with accountability systems but also encompasses the variety of assessment orientations and purposes that serve both summative and formative ends, or, as Stiggins (2003) suggests, assessment of learning and assessment for learning. Noonan & Renihan further mentioned that the recent focus on the concept of assessment literacy has drawn attention to the importance of school-level leadership in incorporating the formative and summative orientations to assessment as a principal’s responsibility (Stiggins, 2002, 2001; Eisner, 1999). The article suggests that educational leaders require the tools to improve classroom instruction, including a focus on what to attend to in improving teaching, observing classrooms, using achievement data, and considering samples of student work as they need to consider the role of assessment leadership as an expectation of contemporary instructional leaders.

Noonan & Renihan gave four points that we need to consider where assessment leadership is concerned. First, examine several critical implications of assessment reform for the instructional leadership role of the principal. Second, identify some of the related, hitherto unanticipated, expectations for leadership. Third, frame these expectations in terms of sets of knowledge, appreciations, and skills, which may serve as a focus for principal self-reflection and professional planning. Fourth, turn our attention to the issue of the supports necessary for principals to be successful in what, for many, represents a formidable and ambiguous aspect of their instructional leadership role.