Julie, assessments are just as much a measure of the quality of instruction as they are the quality of learning. Sometimes it is good to take some of the fear away by allowing students to know you are measuring your own knowledge transfer skills as much as you are measuring their learning abilities. If you have 20 students in a classroom and a large percentage get a question correct then that is a good measure of the quality of instruction but if the majority get a question wrong then the instructor needs to look within themselves and determine if they could have done anything different to deliver the subject matter to their students. James Jackson