The aim of this study is to investigate educational assessment from the perspective of teachers who work in public primary and secondary education, trying to problematize such practice and enlighten critical forms of understanding it. In order to accomplish such objective, the following research questions are proposed: a) How do participants adopt stances in relation to educational assessment? and b) What evaluations and positionings about issues related to educational assessment can be identified in their discourses? The study is embedded in the domain of Applied Linguistics (Moita Lopes, 2006), considering its current viewpoint of investigating language use themes taking into account an interdisciplinary and participatory frame of reference. Along with Applied Linguistics, the research stands in the field of Education, with regard to educational assessment, seen as a historically localized social practice which seeks to observe the teaching and learning process as well as implement actions to improve it (Luckesi, 2011). As a linguistic theoretical framework, the analyses are based on the principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1994; Halliday e Matthiessen, 2004), which conceives language as a set of choices oriented to use. Also, the investigation considers the Appraisal System (Martin, 2001; Martin e White, 2005, Vian Jr, 2009), which focus on speakers /writers Attitude in relation to world phenomena as well as the resources they use to adopt ideological stances in their discourses. The research is aligned with qualitative paradigm (Denzin e Lincoln, 2006), which searches to understand questions based on the meaning people attribute to them. Therefore, a focus group (Gatti, 2012) was conducted with three teachers who work in primary and secondary public schools in Rio de Janeiro. The interaction was recorded in audio and afterwards transcribed. In the extracts selected to be analyzed, the resources of Transitivity, Mood and Attitude were used so as to identify participants stances and evaluations regarding educational assessment. Discussion provided by the analyses indicates a comprehension of educational assessment as a dynamic concept which should be considered within the Brazilian educational system. Moreover, participants negatively judge some practices carried out in the public education scenario and take affective stance with respect to their profession, in spite of the difficulties they are confronted with.