Assessment and Evaluation

Assessment Formal assessment is often criticized for relying on numerical scores without knowing a student’s underlying reasoning, driving curriculum, causing undue teacher and student anxiety, and not accurately reflecting individual achievement Usually quantitative and based on tests but may also include interviews and observations Formal assessment is usually district wide and consists of standardized tests that are easily scored

Formal Assessment Norm-referenced tests provide a way to compare large groups of students The Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the California Achievement test are familiar norm- referenced tests that assess word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension

These types of tests typically cover a broad area of achievement and are administered to a large number of students across a region or country The scores of norm-referenced tests are based on the normal curve and indicate comparative performance levels These tests are referred to as standardized tests because of the rigorous procedures used to develop them and because they are usually scored by computers

Criterion –Referenced Tests Compares students’ scores to accepted levels of achievement in a basal reader program Typically focuses on a limited set of learning tasks rather than testing large groups of students to determine a statistical expectation A specific level of mastery may be expected, such as being able to identify the main idea in 8 out of 10 questions

Basal Series Tests Tests are tied directly to program’s scope and sequence of skills Basal series tests generally feature multiple- choice questions because they are scored more easily

Basal series assessment measures include more choices; more support for using measures, such as portfolios, longer passages for reading from a wider range of genres, and improved comprehension questions They emphasize decoding and comprehension, with 80% correct serving as the usual passing criterion

Issues in Formal Assessment Teachers believe that they are better at assessing achievement than machine- scored, multiple-choice questions Tests cannot diagnose why or how a child chose a particular answer

Students may be drilled on how to choose among a, b, c, or d to prepare for a standardized test Taking standardized tests requires only passive recognition on the part of the child, rather than active engagement

When educational decisions are made using test results that only assess how a student does on that particular day, important factors such as motivation, health, and lack of sleep are ignored Standardized tests do not adequately measure critical thinking, nor do they measure student potential Teachers may be tempted to teach to the test

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