What Teachers Need to Know about Assessment

It's not a stretch to say that assessment is a hot button issue in education; however, you'd be hard pressed to find an educator who doesn't see the value in measuring student progress.

Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 1998

The techniques of constructing tests is the central focus of this book. Conventional assessment items such as multiple choice (Chapter 4), short answer and essay format questions (Chapter 5) are compared and contrasted. Extensive examples are included throughout the text to indicate how to implement the various test items. The advantages and disadvantages of each item type is examined. This book is designed to be a practical guide to test planning and construction and the interpretation of test results. It also provides educators with important fundamental information about assessment and measurement. While in one chapter (Chapter 2) it gives clear and precise advice on the technical aspects of measurement, including descriptive statistics, standard scores, reliability and validity, other chapters consider test planning (Chapter 3), grading techniques (Chapter 7), standardized testing (Chapter 8), and the ethics of student assessment (Chapter 9).

2006

This paper will attempt to outline some of the fundamentals of test measurement and student evaluation in the classroom. It is intended to help minimize the inevitable bias which enters the process of classroom evaluation. Evidence and facts are provided to ascertain whether the qualitative approach to student assessment is just as important as the quantitative approach in assessing student learning outcomes and progress.

Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 2004

The contributors to this volume have sought to make large-scale (usually national) assessments more useful to the daily classroom practices of elementary and secondary school teachers. They ask whether it is possible to modify the existing testing instruments in ways that could provide information that teachers could use to inform their instruction. The conversation is relevant for those who develop policy regarding the use of test scores and other forms of student assessment in classrooms. The issues on national and classroom assessment raised in this volume are also relevant for those who prepare future teachers, and the lessons learned here should be added to the training they provide. Each chapter provides a perspective on classroom assessment that comes from a separate research project carried out over a number of years; thus, the chapters were not initiated around a common framework nor around a common perspective or model of teaching and instruction or of assessment. But the contributors were asked to use the concepts of cognition, observation, and interpretation from the book Knowing What Students Know (Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001) as a guide to their discussion. Another common feature is that several of the projects in this volume were supported by funds from the mathematics and science education research programs of the National Science Foundation and thus represent highly regarded current research efforts recognized by reviewers of research projects.

Dr. Joseph A. King

This paper will attempt to outline some of the fundamentals of test measurement and student evaluation in the classroom. It is intended to help minimize the inevitable bias which enters the process of classroom evaluation. Although the quantitative approach to testing and measurement is emphasized, it is equally important to recognize the value and utility of the qualitative approach to student assessment. Often the two approaches can be combined to provide a holistic assessment of students’ performance. It is also important to be cognizant of the fact that each approach may have its own limitations, depending on what is being measured. An important caveat in this paper is that the precision of results of assessment in education and other social sciences do not parallel results in the natural and physical sciences.

ASSESSMENT Assessment is a systematic process of gathering information about what a student knows, is able to do, and is learning to do. Assessment information provides the foundation for decision-making and planning for instruction and learning. Assessment is an integral part of instruction that enhances, empowers, and celebrates student learning. Using a variety of assessment techniques, teachers gather information about what students know and are able to do, and provide positive, supportive feedback to students. They also use this information to diagnose individual needs and to improve their instructional programs, which in turn helps students learn more effectively. Assessment must be considered during the planning stage of instruction when learning outcomes and teaching methods are being targeted. It is a continuous activity, not something to be dealt with only at the end of a unit of study. Students should be made aware of the expected outcomes of the course and the procedures to be used in assessing performance relative to the learning outcomes. Students can gradually become more actively involved in the assessment process in order to develop lifelong learning skills. Evaluation refers to the decision making which follows assessment. Evaluation is a judgment regarding the quality, value, or worth of

School Based Assessment (SBA) has been carried out for a long time—but there are problems with how it has been done and new priorities that require changes. Traditionally, SBA has involved examinations and tests that mimic or mock public or school end-of-year examinations. Student performance on these kinds of SBA are usually reported as percentage scores or letter grades designed to reflect the same standards as would be applied by the examination authority in the formal, public examinations. Teachers were expected to comment on student performance in terms of effort, and likelihood of the student obtaining a pass or a high grade. It is generally assumed that public examinations (and the school-based mimics) evaluate students fairly and the consequences attached to the grades are merited and appropriate. And the consequences can be immense—high enough grades give entry to the next level of education and highly exceptional grades lead to prestigious financial, educational, and social rewards. SBA also determines the quality of schools and teachers. Hence, public examinations and school-based versions of these assessments had great importance to the school, the teachers, let alone the students and their families. Issues with SBA include: (1) little use of alternative forms of assessments (e.g., portfolios, performances, peer, or self); (2) much trickle down of high-stakes examinations into pre-examination school years. There are some advantages to this approach to SBA. Since the stakes are so high, students are usually motivated to make significant effort. There is usually systematic and extensive coverage of the syllabus content, ensuring students and teachers pay attention to those things. There is, in most countries, a strong social acceptance that examinations are accurate, lead to valid decisions as to who is good, and have positive social consequences (i.e., exams identify talent regardless of sex, social status, ethnicity, wealth, and so on). Furthermore, there is a strong conviction that examinations are relatively robust against corruption, collusion, and cheating. There is also potential to provide diagnostic analysis of which parts of the required curriculum have yet to be or are already mastered. This is only a potential benefit as very careful curriculum analysis and mapping of test content to the curriculum map and effective reporting of performance is required. However, for teachers in schools to take advantage of this approach requires that teachers have significant professional development so as to be able to replicate the highest standards in testing. However, ordinary classroom teachers rarely have the necessary skills, which are normally available to qualifications authorities and test development companies. Hence, instead of turning teachers into testing experts, we aimed to give teachers a computer-assisted tool that helped teachers fulfil better the task which they were employed for— pedagogically skilled delivery and facilitation of real learning in the real-time space of a classroom. In other words, we supported the teacher with computer assistance. Another significant limitation of tests and examinations is that they usually generate a total score (a percentage) and/or a rank-order score such as position in class (e.g., 1 st or last) or position relative to a norming sample (e.g., percentile or stanine). While these scores have some educational value, they do not lead to strong educational decision-making in the This is the pre-published version.