Assessment Approaches

Assessment What is measured? When is it done? Abilities Intelligence, Language Skills, Auditory & Visual Perception Outcomes Standardized Tests, Achievement Exams Learning Performance on actual literacy tasks During instruction documenting student behaviors as the student works at learning To hypothesize about the students knowledge and confusions To record progress over time and to plan effective and appropriate instruction Can misuse assessment results - readiness indicators

Usually before instruction

After instruction

Why is it done?

Attempt to predict how well a student might learn To group children according to estimated abilities May lead to educational practices that deprive children of learning opportunities - keeping them away from certain challenges, giving them

Monitor performance of a child, class, school, district

How are results used? Cautions

To address accountability issues Results are approximations or estimates - may misrepresent individual progress - dont tell where achievement levels of the education system lie - dont

less to learn or assigning simplified tasks.

know how or why high or low scores occurred - can only guess how to change teaching