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Measuring abilities
Measurement theory has allowed us to measure the abilities of individual learners - intelligence, language skills, auditory and visual perception, and so on. When we measure these things we predict how well an individual student might learn in our programmes. This type of testing is usually done before instruction and it has resulted in children being grouped according to estimated abilities.
Even when we give these tests to individuals we score them according to what we know happens to groups of children. We predict for individuals from group data, not from individual data. We use norms or average scores for children of the same age. Such predictions are often wrong for individual children.
If teachers do use outcome tests and ability scores, and many will be required to do so, they should be aware that every expectation they hold of what a child can and cannot learn should be mistrusted, in the sense of holding a tentative hypothesis that can be revised. For if we give the learner particular opportunities and the right learning conditions, that learner might prove the test’s predictions to be wrong. Teachers should always leave room to be surprised by individual children.
Every test score has some error of measurement attached to it; there is error in group scores and error in individual scores. We should keep an open mind on what is possible for the individual child to achieve. We have in the past sometimes made assumptions about children that closed the possibility of their learning more.
When our predictions are wrong for individual children, education practices tend to deprive those children of opportunities to learn. We keep them away from certain challenges (we keep them out of school, or we hold them back to repeat the same class with the same curriculum, or we give them less to learn, or we give them drastically simplified tasks).

Assessments that guide our teaching
Effective teaching calls for a third kind of assessment designed to record how the child works on tasks and to inform teaching as it occurs. To use the metaphor of a football game, you do not improve the play of a team by looking at the outcome score. The coach must look closely at how the team is playing the game and help them to change the moves or strategies that produce a better final score.
When the class teacher observes how individual children are problem-solving, it makes a difference to what happens in classrooms. It is particularly useful in three kinds of situations:

Classroom teachers can observe students as they construct responses by moving among them while they work. They can observe how individuals change over time by keeping good records. And they can allow children to take different learning paths to the same outcomes because they are clearly aware of the learning that is occurring.
Such teachers are like craftsmen, monitoring how their products take shape. Think of the painter or potter adjusting the light, shade, colour, shape or texture of a product in formation. Or we could think of the violinist in the orchestra who knows that one of his strings is slipping off pitch. He takes an opportunity during a pause in the performance to avert disaster by tightening the string. He would not wait for the critic’s review of the performance in the morning paper, saying one violin was out of tune! Skilled craftspeople fine-time the ongoing construction or performance. Teachers should work in this way.
To improve teaching, teachers need to observe children’s responses during literary instruction

Observing oral language
Early childhood education has used observations of what children can do because little children often cannot put into words what they are doing or thinking.
In the past 25 years, studies of how children learn to speak have been exciting. In the 1960s researchers went into homes to observe children learning language and record its use as it occurred in natural settings. They followed the progress of particular children as they developed and their language changed. They studied what actually occurred, making precise records, and they did not depend on tests or on recollections of what occurred (Brown, 1973; Paley, 1981; Wells, 1986).
Interest shifted from an early focus on the structures of language to meaning. In the 1970s this led us to study the effects of the contexts in which language occurs. The young child’s language is so related to the things he is talking about that you can have trouble understanding him unless you also know about the things he refers to. We became more sensitive to the ways in which we change our language according to the place we are in, and who we are talking to. We learned more about the ways in which the languages of the homes differ, more about dialects and more about the complexities of bilingual learning.
Attention moved to the detailed study of interactions between mothers and children, teachers and children, children and children. As a result of all this recording of naturally occurring behaviour we now know a great deal about the ways in which the contexts of language interactions facilitate or constrain the development of language in children. We know that entry into formal education settings such as schools reduces children’s opportunities for talking, and that some types of programmes prevent children from using the excellent and efficient ways of learning language which they used before they came to school (Cazden, 1988).