Assessment Portfolio

Sean Patrick Rogers

EPSY 4010
 Validity, Reliability, and Fairness

Throughout EPSY 4010, I have become familiar with three concepts absolutely crucial to

assessment. Weekly readings, lectures, and assignments helped reinforce the important ideas of

validity, reliability, and fairness. Validity is the most significant aspect of assessment we

discussed throughout the course. For an assessment to be valid, the assessment must actually

measure the curricular aims that it is supposed to address. If a test is valid, it accurately assesses

students on desired content standards and allows the teachers to accurately interpret results and

make inferences about student achievement. Reliability describes the consistency of an

assessment to measure what the assessment seeks to measure. Fairness is closely tied to validity.

Fairness refers to an assessment’s ability to measure student achievement equally. For an

assessment to be fair, it must allow students of diverse backgrounds to have equal opportunity to

exhibit their understanding. Although I was unfamiliar with these concepts essential to

assessment at the beginning of the semester, this course has supported my understanding of these

three themes critical to assessment.

Since the very start of this course, these three themes have been very apparent. After

crafting the initial assessment belief statement, I read the WPJ chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 3

allowed me to become familiar with the idea of reliability. This chapter discussed three types of

reliability evidence as well as standard measurement error and how to compute it. Chapter 4

discussed the importance of validity to assessment. This chapter elaborated on the concept of

validity by discussing four sources of validity evidence as well as the important relationship

between reliability and validity. Chapter 5 described the idea of fairness and how avoiding

assessment bias allows students of all races, genders, and religions to succeed and demonstrate

their learning equally. The chapter also discussed accommodations and modifications that should
be made when assessing students with disabilities as well as English language learners. These

chapters did a great job of introducing these themes that would be continually expanded on

throughout the course.

Course lectures and learning modules further developed my understanding of reliability,

validity, and fairness. An in class activity incorporating a bulls-eye poster helped reinforce the

concepts of validity and reliability. This visual representation of the two concepts really stuck

with me throughout the course and gave me a graphic guide to understand the relationship

between these two big ideas. Although both of these themes are essential to crafting assessments,

one can have an assessment that is reliable but not valid. However, one cannot have an

assessment that is valid but not reliable. Therefore, reliability is absolutely necessary for an

assessment to be valid. A class lecture also helped clarify the theme of fairness. An early

PowerPoint illustrated how an assessment can be biased and offensive. Looking at the example

of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I was able to clearly see how negative stereotypes and implied slurs

could be implemented in the creation of assessments. This example opened my eyes to the issue

of fairness in assessment and allowed me to consider how unfair assessments can be biased

against various ethnicities, races, religions, and genders.

Although course readings and lectures were able to introduce me to these important

themes in assessment, it was not until the classroom assessment plan assignment that I was able

to personally grapple with these ideas and work to create an assessment that was reliable, valid,

and fair. The classroom assessment plan initially overwhelmed me but by working through the

assessment planning process, I was able to hone my skills as an educator and create a series of

assessments that were conscious of the big themes discussed in the course. By identifying a set

of standards and crafting a series of objectives, I was able to develop formative, summative, and
performance assessments. With my standards in mind, I made assessments that directly evaluated

students on the content standards. Each formative assessment I created allowed the teacher to

assess students’ ability to meet the objectives and standards of the unit. Using the data collected

from these assessments, the teacher could modify instruction in order to support student

understanding. By crafting a table of specifications, I was able to create test items that explicitly

assessed students on the desired objectives and standards. Through this table of specifications as

well as other aspects of the assessment plan, I was able to create assessments that supported the

concept of validity. The classroom assessment plan also allowed me to be conscious of fairness.

After creating each test item, I would reread the item and see if the wording or concepts was

offensive or if the question had evidence of other assessment bias. Despite the difficulty of the

assignment, the classroom assessment plan gave me an invaluable experience that allowed me to

create assessments that were reliable, valid, and fair.

With student teaching quickly approaching, I hope to always have these three big themes

of assessment in mind. As I create various formative, summative, and performance assessments

for my World Understanding course, I will remember the readings, lectures, and assignments in

this course that helped support the themes of reliability, validity, and fairness. I hope that I will

be able to create assessments that allow me to make accurate inferences about student

understanding throughout the rest of my educational career.

 My Assessment Belief Statement Now

As a pre-service teacher, I see assessment as a powerful tool that allows me to measure

student understanding and achievement within my classroom. As a student, the mere mention of

the word “assessment” was enough to instill feelings of anxiety and apprehension. With the help

of this class as well as my experiences in Coventry High School, I can now see assessment as an

absolutely crucial element of education that allows teachers to evaluate student understanding

and monitor student progress. Although I initially perceived assessment as tests and quizzes

designed to assign student grades, I now understand that assessment transcends just tests and

quizzes and includes formative and performance assessments crucial to learning. Through

creating valid, reliable, and fair assessments, teachers can measure student understanding of

content standards and objectives that need to be met in education. Assessment allows educators

to gauge what students understand, what they don’t understand, and what needs to be reinforced.

Assessment is not only an important tool that allows educators to analyze student

understanding and track progress, but it is an invaluable aspect of education that allows teachers

to evaluate their own teaching. While I once thought that assessment was a scheme created by

teachers to create stress in student lives, I now see assessment as a lens through which teachers

can examine their own teaching and consider what adjustments need to be made in order to

further student understanding. Formative assessments allow teachers to examine their own

teaching and implement modifications to instruction so that students can meet objectives and

standards. With this in mind, assessments are not only helpful in regards to evaluating student

achievement, but they are also beneficial tools that allow teachers to assess their own

performance and make valuable improvements as educators.

 Assessment also means a concrete way of tracking student learning and communicating

the results to students, parents, and administration. Without well-crafted assessments, teachers

would have no reliable way to make inferences about student achievement and growth over time.

As an educator, I am responsible for communicating the results of student learning to the parents

of my students as well as my superiors in administration. Assessments allow me to collect data

and grades that reflect student understanding in a clear and quantifiable way. With the data

collected from these assessments, I can easily visualize student progress and discuss trends and

patterns of student understanding to others.

These assessments help hold both the students and myself as an educator accountable for

the learning that goes on in my classroom. Despite my relationship with assessment as a student,

I can now see the incredible value that assessment has to education. As a pre-service teacher, I

want to develop more skills and strategies that allow me to create and use assessment effectively

in my classroom. If I can utilize formative, summative, and performance assessments in my

classroom, I can have a beneficial system that allows me to gauge student understanding,

evaluate my own teaching, and communicate student achievement in a clear and concise manner.

Assessments may seem overwhelming at times for both teachers and students, but I believe that

teachers should continuously work to perfect the craft of using assessment in order to further

understanding and success in their classrooms.

 My Assessment Belief Statement Then

The word “assessment” always makes me think back to my first ever quiz. In fifth grade,

my social studies teacher gave my class our first ever formal assessment. We were given a map

of the United States and asked to label all of the states and their capitals. Half way through the

quiz I totally blanked on the whole mid-west region. The stress totally overwhelmed me and I

ended up leaving a large area of the map blank. Before the quiz was even collected I was aware

of what just happened. I had failed my first assessment in school. Since then, my studying skills

as well as my sense of geography have improved but that feeling of failing has stuck with me.

After receiving an F on my first quiz, I became obsessed with grades and success. Instead of

learning the material because I was interested in it, I found myself thinking about how I could be

tested on the material and working to make sure that I could receive the grade I wanted.

Although the sight of an exam on a college syllabus still invokes the memory of that

geography quiz and strikes some fear into me, my relationship towards assessment has started to

shift. Through the lens of a pre-service teacher I have been able to see the importance of tracking

student progress in a quantifiable manner. It’s necessary for teachers, students, and parents to be

able to see progress in student learning through well-crafted assessment. Despite an

understanding of its role in the world of education, I still think back to the stress and fear that test

taking can cause. I would love if the students I teach learn the information because the content is

interesting and they are wholly engaged. Unfortunately, many students are driven by the anxiety

of testing instead of the interest in the course. I dislike that teachers have to manipulate their

curriculum to teach test taking techniques and tweak content to cater towards a standardized

assessment.
 While the term “assessment” may instill negative memories and emotions in of me, I

don’t want to get rid of assessment entirely. I want to be able to assess student learning in a way

that doesn’t cause my students immense stress and doesn’t make it so that I have to take time out

of my lessons to discuss test-taking techniques. Assessment may be necessary in the world of

education but I would like to learn how to make it so that my students’ wellbeing and

relationship to the course material don’t suffer from testing. Through this course I hope to learn

how to make “assessment” a more positive term and help create a classroom environment where

students are more concerned with the information they are learning instead of the grade they are

receiving.