How much should we pre-assess our students?

I will be back to school in a month, and whether I like it or not, we will still be assessing our students on a regular basis. Our system has recently adopted a system-wide pre-assessment to determine which students will need intervention. Those students who do poorly on the initial screening will go on to take another battery of tests.

I've always done some sort of pre-assessment: grammar pre-assessment, writing pre-assessment, skills pre-assessment. I also look at standardized test scores from previous years. This past year, I kept a copious data notebook (5 and a half inch binder that was full by the end of the year!) and tested before every unit.

The question for me is: Are we pre-assessing so much that we're putting the cart before the horse? When do you have enough information. Anecdotally, I can tell you which students just don't get it. I know by looking at handwriting, attitude, behaviors. Veteran teachers are like moms: we know when something is wrong. Do I really need one more test to tell me that he can't read?

Pre-assessing does give me "real" information that comes in handy when speaking to principals or parents. It's an excellent tool when referring for special services. Parents like numbers. The pre-assessment data is more telling than report card grades.

Which leads me to my next question? If we're pre-assessing, shouldn't we be doing standard-based grading? To me it only makes sense. They didn't know it before, now they do. Percentage-based grading just doesn't make sense to me.

A problem though is keeping up with all this data. While, I kept data on each and every student, I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the amount of data that I had. I couldn't make sense of it sometimes. Record-keeping became a nightmare. I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to keep my data for this upcoming year.

Pre-assessment is here to stay (for now). How do you feel about it?

Melissa