Educators Liability Insurance: Assessing Student Progress  

For educators, student growth and progress is a top priority but can be hard to gauge and assess. It is the professional responsibility of educators and school board authorities to establish curriculum which prepares students to advance. However, with new standards and education requirement, the pace of learning in the class room has quickened in recent years which occasionally leave students and teachers struggling to keep up.

According to the Association of American Educators, quality formative assessments play a key role in the learning process and helps educators establish where their students are succeeding and struggling, therefore empowering educators to identify areas of learning which should be allotted more time and emphasis. Here are a few of their suggestions or instituting quality formative assessments.

Digital Polling: Digital polling allows educators to create a quick assessments that students can answer on digital devices so that feedback can be recorded and analyses instantly. This allows educators to monitor students’ progress in real time.

Allowing students gauge their own understanding: Providing students the opportunity to self assess is also a great way for educators to identify learning trends and gaps. Asking students to rate their proficiency of a pre-determined lists of topics at the beginning, middle and end of a lesson can help monitor growth and understanding.

S-O-S Summaries: S-O-S assessments have become common in key states implementing the Common Core standards. In these assessments, teachers provide statements to the students who then give their opinion on the statement and provide evidence, or support, for their opinion. Not only does this check for understanding, it also helps students practice providing support in their verbal and written arguments.

Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-down: These impromptu assessments are much more informal polls of a student’s general feelings about there learning. In this method, the teacher pauses in the middle of a lesson and asks students to either show a thumbs-up for understanding or a thumbs-down for not understanding.  The teacher can then tell right away with very little interruption or pressure whether students need to spend more time on the topic or whether the class is ready to move on.

Being an educator comes with a host of liability exposures. Professional Governmental Underwriters, Inc. is a full-service risk management company specializes is addressing the insurance needs of Educators and Educational Institutions. We understand that a broad spectrum of insurance coverage is essential to defend the educational entity, its employees and even its volunteers. Our Educator Liability Insurance programs are tailored specifically for public, parochial and nonprofit private school entities including colleges, universities and vocational training schools. For more information about our Educator Liability Insurance programs Contact Us today.