Standards and Assessment Alternatives

1. Standards and Assessment Alternatives

2. Standards-based Assessment • Content standards: describe the declarative knowledge or skills to be learned. • Performance standards: describe the level of proficiency desired for mastery of learning targets. • Virtually all professional associations have developed lists of educational standards.

3. Review of What to Assess • Focus on the assessment-based inferences. • A small number of clearly articulated and important learning targets. • Consideration of the type of learning outcomes desired (declarative, procedural).

4. A Variety of Assessment Alternatives • Norm-referenced (NRTs) vs Criterion-referenced (CRTs) assessment. • Selected- vs Constructed-response assessment schemes. • More traditional item types (e.g., M-C, T-F, short answer) vs Performance assessment.

5. NRTs vs CRTs: Advantages and Disadvantages • CRTs are appropriate when clearly-defined standards or assessment domains exist, and the intent is to describe performance in terms of what a student knows and is able to do. • NRTs are appropriate when a clearly-defined norm group is available and the intent is to describe performance in terms of what is typical or reasonable. • An assessment can yield both types of interpretation.

6. Assessment Frames of Reference: Ability • Compare student’s performance to potential performance. • Requires a good measure of potential performance. • Requires a knowledge of what skills and abilities are prerequisite to those to be learned. • Too often, children’s capabilities are prejudged according to class or group membership.

7. Assessment Frames of Reference: Growth • Compares a student’s current performance to his/her earlier performance. • Higher scores go to those who evidence the most growth. • Requires reliable/valid measures of both earlier and current performance. • Requires a low relationship between measures of earlier and current performance.

8. Assessment Frames of Reference: Norms • Compares a student’s performance to that of students in a well-defined norm group. • Norm group: another group assessed under the same or similar conditions. • Provides information regarding typical performance. • Does not provide information regarding what the student knows and is able to do.

9. Assessment Frames of Reference: Standards • Compares student’s performance to well-established instructional standards. • Indicates what the student knows and is able to do with respect to the instructional standards (or content domain). • Does NOT provide information regarding whether the performance is typical or reasonable.

10. Assessment Frames of Reference: None • Some measurements provide no frame of reference for interpretation. • Mortimer attained a score of 63 on his math test. • Morticia got 75% correct on the same test. • Clem met the passing criteria (on the same test) of 80 items correct.