What is Assessment?
Dictionary: as•sess•ment
Pronunciation: (u-ses'munt), [key] —n.
- the act of assessing; appraisal; evaluation.
According to R.J. Dietel, J.L. Herman, and R.A. Knuth (1991), assessment may be defined as "any method used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses."
The implication is that assessment can be as simple as a teacher's subjective judgment based on a single observation of student performance, or as complex as a five-hour standardized test. The idea of current knowledge implies that what a student knows is always changing and that we can make judgments about student achievement through comparisons over a period of time. Assessment may affect decisions about grades, advancement, placement, instructional needs, and curriculum.
- Types of Assessment
- Formal Assessment:
- Placement Tests
- Unit Tests/Benchmark Tests
- Objectives assessed
- Skills assessed
- Performance assessment
- How do I use the information?
- Assess individual student needs
- Instructional
- Motivational
- Assess class needs
- Inform instruction
- Informal Assessment:
- Anecdotal records
- Conference records
- Self-assessment
- How do I use the information?
- Measure growth and learning over time
- Document children as learners
- Document strategies children use
- Plan interventions
- Help children learn how they learn
- Inform instruction
- Portfolio assessment:
- Growth and Achievement
- Monitoring/Observation
- Checklists
- How do I use the information?
- Measure growth and learning over time
- Document children as learners
- Plan interventions
- Inform instruction
Characteristics of good assessment for classroom purposes:
- The content of the tests (the knowledge and skills assessed) should match the teacher's educational objectives and instructional emphases.
- The test items should represent the full range of knowledge and skills that are the primary targets of instruction.
- Expectations for student performance should be clear.
- The assessment should be free of extraneous factors which unnecessarily confuse or inadvertently cue student responses. (For example, unclear directions and contorted questions may confuse a student and confound his/her ability to demonstrate the skills which are intended for assessment. A math item that requires reading skill will inhibit the performance of students who lack adequate skills for comprehension.)
Additional considerations for valid assessment:
- Students are involved in setting goals and criteria for assessment.
- Students perform, create, produce, or do something.
- Tasks require students to use higher-level thinking and/or problem solving skills.
- Tasks often provide measures of metacognitive skills and attitudes, collaborative skills and intrapersonal skills as well as the more usual intellectual products.
- Assessment tasks measure meaningful instructional activities.
- Tasks often are contextualized in real-world applications.
- Student responses are scored according to specified criteria, known in advance, which define standards for good performance.
What To Do If You Are Assessment – Activity
Three main things have to be considered when we design an assessment. Whether we are doing a performance assessment, a norm referenced parallel assessment, or a criterion referenced assessment, these three areas must be considered.
- Content
– What knowledge, skill, concept, process, vocabulary, etc. must students know to be successful?
- Knowledge
– what general learning or information is tied to the concept taught?
- Skill
– what do students need to do to demonstrate their knowledge?
- Concept
– what is the big idea students must know?
- Process
- what steps (strategies, analysis, reasoning, etc.) are required in practicing a skill?
- Vocabulary
– what content words does a student need to know to be able to answer the question?
- Context – What are the conditions under which the content is being assessed?
- Format
– Visual? Words/visual split? Graphic to read? Maps? Symbols?
- Answer
- Multiple choice? Essay? Fill-in? Not here as a choice?
- Vocabulary
– instructional vocabulary necessary – list, valid, selection, compare and contrast, etc.
- Cognitive Level – At what cognitive level is the student being assessed?
- Bloom’s Taxonomy:
- Knowledge: recall
- Comprehension: understanding
- Application: apply knowledge
- Analysis: break down parts
- Synthesis: put parts together/new way
- Evaluation: judge the value
Categories in the Cognitive Domain:
(with Outcome-Illustrating Verbs)
- Knowledge of terminology; specific facts; ways and means of dealing with specifics (conventions, trends and sequences, classifications and categories, criteria, methodology); universals and abstractions in a field (principles and generalizations, theories and structures):
Knowledge is (here) defined as the remembering (recalling) of appropriate, previously learned information.
- Comprehension
: Grasping (understanding) the meaning of informational materials.
- Application
: The use of previously learned information in new and concrete situations to solve problems that have single or best answers.
- Analysis
: The breaking down of informational materials into their component parts, examining (and trying to understand the organizational structure of) such information to develop divergent conclusions by identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and/or finding evidence to support generalizations.
- Synthesis
: Creatively or divergently applying prior knowledge and skills to produce a new or original whole.
- Evaluation
: Judging the value of material based on personal values/opinions, resulting in an end product, with a given purpose, without real right or wrong answers.
Where does assessment begin?
Assessment is an on-going cycle, as the graphic shows. So where does the cycle begin? It begins with clear statements of the educational expectations. We call these objectives, and we need them to be clear, but also stated in behavioral terms. What observable behaviors do we expect from students in this unit of study?
There are three parts to a behavioral objective. This is not a goal, although having the student succeed in demonstrating the behavior is a goal. Goals do not contain the three parts of behavioral objectives.
- State the conditions under which learning occurs
- Define the skill or knowledge to be learned and the observable action the student uses to show the learning
- Define the level of acceptable standard – how well must the student have learned the skill or knowledge
This kind of objective includes the performance assessment, but also evaluates a student’s skills and knowledge. This is a formal assessment.
Examples of well-written behavioral objectives:
In an oral presentation (conditions), the student will explain why Australian ranchers turned to sheep raising (knowledge), giving at least 3 reasons from reading or discussion in class (standard).
Without the use of a calculator, students will correctly multiply 8 of 10 3-digit problems correctly.
Using notes taken in class, students will describe 5 landforms found in the United States.
We have to take a step back behind the objective, though. How do we know what skills and knowledge we want students to learn? Look in the teacher’s edition? No. Sometimes what is in the T.E. can be a help, but it isn’t written for the students in our classrooms, in our state.
We start with standards. (frontloading) What are the geography standards we want students to meet? What math standards will be necessary for them to acquire the geographic knowledge?
Fortunately, geography and social studies in general is not tested in Arizona, so we don’t need to go the route of backloading. That is, we don’t have to start with test items and work backward to what students need to learn! This is not the same as teaching to the test.
Brain research indicates that the brain creates particular schema to handle knowledge. When I can integrate a variety of educational disciplines, I help students’ brains to find a place to put new knowledge, a place that helps them understand how things work together and helps them learn, not just remember temporarily, information and skills.
Here’s an example of what this might look like. My first graders just did a science experiment involving evaporation of fluids from apples. Science, math and language arts were all integrated by the science/math teacher. As the social studies teacher, what standards of geography can I teach students which would be connected to this learning?
The National Geography Standards: 1994 lists Geography Standard 11: The patterns and networks of economic interdependence on earth’s surface. When I look further, I find that this will fit perfectly into my apple unit. Students can map locations in our state, country, the world (depending on grade level) where apples are grown. They can look at the reasons for the apple industry in an area. They can look at other industries which are based on apple growing. They can look at the transportation and distribution methods used to move the apple products. We can go into history, looking at the ways these things were done in the past, and what improvements have been made.
This study might take us back to Standard 8: The characteristics and spatial distributions of ecosystems on the earth’s surface. Perhaps we’ll include Standard 5: That people create regions to interpret earth’s complexity. The mapping we do will include Standard 1: How to use maps and other representations…to report information from a spatial perspective.
Now I can investigate the state math standards, either directly from the state, or the district aligned curriculum, to find where the math is. I’m not adding math, usually. I’m already using math in the geography and science. If there is additional math that can be added, I will evaluate whether it needs to be added, whether it improves the instructional unit or is extraneous.
Once I’ve determined my yearly outcomes, I know what I need students to learn. Once I know that, I can determine how to help get students there (including thinking of different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and different learning styles). Once I know how I’m going to help students acquire the knowledge, I can determine how to assess whether or not they do. Once I assess student learning, I can evaluate what’s been done and plan the next step in instruction.
Parallel Test Items
Because we all live with the reality of achievement testing, both the SAT norm-referenced testing and the AIMS criterion-referenced testing, it is important to prepare our students for the format and cognitive levels required. AIMS doesn’t give sample items. SAT has sample items available to districts. Check with your district assessment personnel for that.
With SAT9, the geography items began in third grade. Arizona doesn’t test for science and social science, though individual districts may. However, having similar, parallel test items does prepare our students to take the test and does provide us with certain kinds of information. This is not performance evaluation, but skill or knowledge assessment.
At 3rd grade level, there are 4 test objectives, and at 4th there are ten. Typical items at those grade levels have a graphic representation followed by a question and answer choices. There may be two questions for a graphic. At higher grade levels, it may be a split format. For example, the information may be stated, then the graphic, followed by the question and answers.
Here is an example of a test item with a graphic:
This question is a completion question, as are many of the social science questions. Think about the skills necessary to answer the question. What content vocabulary does the 4th grade student need to understand? At what level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is this question? What skills does a student need to correctly answer the question? What knowledge is required? Where does this fit in the geography standards? Is a math standard involved?
Here is a second example:
This question is a multiple choice, short answer. Think about the skills necessary to answer the question. What content vocabulary does the 4th grade student need to understand? At what level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is this question? What skills does a student need to correctly answer the question? What knowledge is required? Where does this fit the geography standards? Are any math standards involved?
And a third example, with no graphic:
Again, these questions are completion questions. Think about the skills necessary to answer the question. What content vocabulary does the 4th grade student need to understand? At what level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is this question? What skills does a student need to correctly answer the question? What knowledge is required? Where does this fit the geography standards? Are any math standards involved?
A Word About Rubrics
Rubrics can be very helpful in determining where a product or process falls in a continuum of excellence. If the skill or knowledge being assessed is not developmental, that is, everyone in class has the ability to succeed at the task, there is no reason not to use the rubric to help provide a grade for a student’s work.
The best way I have found to translate rubric scores into a grade is to use a 5 point rubric and award up to 5 points for an evaluation. At the mid-term and final marking period, I add the number of points possible and divide that number into the number of points earned by a student. This gives me a percentage score which can be translated into the district grading system.
For example, Student A has scored, on a variety of tasks, rubric scores of 5, 5, 4, 3, 5, and 4. That’s a total of 26/30, or a percentage of 87%. Looking at my district grading system, I see that is a B. I average the B (or the 87) with other scores the student has earned for homework, tests, essays, etc. to determine the grade for the marking period.
Please do not translate developmental rubrics, such as the 6 Traits of Writing into a grade. These rubrics are based on what is developmentally appropriate for a child, and all children cannot score the top score at a given time. These are continuum rubrics and should not be used for grading, only for informing instruction. If we use them for grades, we are penalizing students who are not developmentally ready for a particular level.
How do I design a rubric? There are several free sites on the internet which can help you do this quickly and easily.
Rubistar
has some which require little adaptation.
At Teach-nology you can customize a rubric completely.
If you’ve never used a rubric, you might want to start here
Teach-nology Tutorial
Another good step-by-step site is:
Teachervision
Some already-been-designed rubrics can be found here:
7-12 Educators at about.com