Assessing Student Achievement in Physical Education for Teacher Evaluation

Abstract

While many teachers continue to ignore the practice of assessing student achievement in physical education, recent federal pressures to include student assessment data in teacher evaluation systems has shown that assessment of student outcomes is here to stay. Though there is a strong tradition of assessing teacher practice in physical education, standardized measures of student achievement and the requirement to show data on student learning in physical education are relatively new ideas. This article reviews issues about using student achievement data to evaluate physical education teachers. It also presents examples of assessments that could be used to document student achievement for the purpose of teacher evaluation.