Summarizing Students' Achievements and Abilities in Education

2. Chapter 15 Summarizing Students’ Achievements and Abilities

3. Indicators of Achievement • Must be reliable • Must be standardized • Must be valid • Must be practical

4. Summarizing the Results of a Single Assessment

5. Raw Scores • Based solely on the number or point value of correctly answered items • easy to calculate • difficult to interpret • raw score = 6

6. Criterion-Referenced Scores • Indicate what a student has achieved, relative to specific objectives or standards • either-or score (pass or fail) or level of competence

7. Norm-Referenced Scores • Indicate how a student’s performance compares with average performance of peers • grade-equivalent scores • age-equivalent scores • percentile ranks • standard scores

8. Standard Scores • How far a student’s performance is from the group mean • tend to reflect the normal distribution of scores Many Some None Number of People Low Moderate High Characteristics Being Measured

9. Calculating Standard Scores

10. Using Scores in the Classroom • Criterion-referenced scores most useful • Raw scores second-best choice • Norm-referenced scores occasionally appropriate

11. Determining Final Class Grades

12. For Effective Grading • Take the job seriously • Base grades on achievement • Base grades on hard data • Use many assessments, but don’t count everything • Identify and stick to reasonable grading system • Accompany grades with qualitative information

13. Considering Improvement • Assign greater weight to assessments conducted at the end of semester • Give students opportunities to correct errors & demonstrate mastery • Consider offering retakes • Reinforce improvement in other ways

14. Considering Effort • Most experts recommend againstbasing grades on effort. • more skilled and knowledgeable students don’t need to exert much effort • effort can only be assessed subjectively

15. Extra Credit • Appropriate if: • available to all students • related to instructional goals and objectives

16. Late and Missing Assignments • Explain why punctuality is important. • Solicit students’ input about reasonable deadlines. • Give students guidance/support to complete assignments on time. • Record “Incomplete” and describe work that must be done to pass. • If possible, base final grades on subset of summative assessment results.

17. Using Portfolios

18. Portfolios • Collection of student’s work • compiled systematically over time • paper-pencil assignments & other artifacts • may include student reflection, self-evaluation • Types of portfolio • working • developmental • course • best-work

19. Constructing Student Portfolios • Planning • Collection • Selection • Reflection • Projection • Presentation

20. Standardized Tests

21. Achievement Tests • Assess how much students have learned of what they have been taught • enable comparisons across time/place • Reliability tends to be high • Content validity may be low

22. Aptitude & Intelligence Tests • General scholastic aptitude tests • general capacity to learn (“intelligence”) • intended to predict future academic achievement • predictive reliability often low • Specific aptitude & ability tests • intended to predict future performance in a particular content domain • predictive reliability often even lower

23. School Readiness Tests • Intended to assess cognitive skills important for success in a typical kindergarten or first-grade curriculum • helpful for looking for specific delays • scores correlate only moderately with later school achievement

24. Using Technology • Adaptive testing is possible • Can assess skills & knowledge • animations, simulations, videos, recorded messages • Can assess problem-solving skills, strategies • Can assess abilities under varying levels of support • Allow on-the-spot objective scoring and analyses

25. Choosing Standardized Tests • Choose a test with high validity for your needs • Choose a test with high reliability for students similar to yours • Make sure that the norm group is relevant to your population

26. Using Standardized Tests • Take students’ age and development into account • Make sure students are adequately prepared • Administer according to directions and report any unusual circumstances

27. Interpreting Standardized Test Scores • Have a clear, justifiable rationale for establishing cutoffs • Compare standardized test scores only when they are derived from the same or equivalent norm group(s) • Never use a single test score to make important decisions

28. High-Stakes Testing and Accountability

29. High-Stakes Tests • High stakes = single assessment used to make major decisions • Accountability = school personnel are mandated to accept responsibility for students’ performance

30. No Child Left Behind Act • Mandates high-stakes testing and accountability in all public schools • Mandates that all states establish challenging academic content standards • Requires “Adequately Yearly Progress” in meeting state-determined standards • Highly controversial with many states applying for and obtaining waivers to develop state-specific plans

31. Problems with High-Stakes Testing • Tests may not reflect important instructional goals. • Teachers may teach to the tests. • Too much attention may be focused on a small group of students. • School personnel have disincentives to follow standardized testing procedures and to assess progress of low achievers. • Different criteria lead to different conclusions about student performance. • Too much emphasis is placed on punishing low-performing schools. • Students’ motivation affects performance, and consistently low performance affects motivation.

32. Potential Solutions • Identify, assess important things • Advocate for a focus on individual student progress • Advocate for support for “failing” schools • Educate the public about what standardized tests can and cannot do • Look at alternatives to traditional tests • Advocate for the use of multiple measures in any high-stakes decisions

33. Taking Student Diversity into Account

34. Considering Diversity • Cultural bias • items can offend or unfairly penalize some students based on ethnicity, gender, SES. • not all students are familiar with group-administered standardized test procedures • stereotype threat can occur • Language differences • Students with special needs

35. Confidentiality and Communication About Assessment Results

36. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) • Limits normal school testing practices to assessment of achievement and scholastic aptitude • Restricts access to students’ assessment results to: • students who earn them • their parents • school personnel directly involved with students’ education and well-being

37. Communicating Assessment Results • Make sure you understand the results yourself • Describe the test and students’ performance in broad, general terms • When reporting specific test scores, use percentile ranks and stanine

38. The Big Picture

39. The Big Picture • Considerable information is lost when performance is summarized as a single score. • Summative evaluations of achievement must have high content validity. • Most assessment instruments focus on cognitive factors affecting learning and achievement. • other factors may be equally influential