Assessment Tree

I have a great vantage point from my seat in class - I can see both our classroom trees.  On the right our rainforest tree has been with us from the very beginning; growing insidiously and breathing life into our environment.  That tree is home to many animals and provides oxygen for our planet.  Then there is the new addition to our family - the assessment tree on the left.  If you take a second and contrast and compare the two you come up with the fact that they are both trees, both have a trunk approximately the same gerth, both have branches and are both about the same size.  The difference between the two is that the rainforest tree is a formative assessment - always changing and adapting depending on what animal is living in it and how the climate it lives in provides for it.  Whereas the assessment tree is a summative assessment.  It is a culmination of a students four years of formal high school education.  And while it is impressive with its scaffolding of lesson upon lesson and test upon test, quiz upon quiz it is a dead tree - not living and breathing - not adapting but rather a statement - which could be interpreted as........