4. How can we find out what students know, are able to do, and are interested in? We can assess students for all of these…
5. First, a Word on Assessment… There are many kinds of assessments… Formal and informal… Summative and formative… Commercially-published and teacher-made…
17. What does this tell us? The average 8th grader reads at a “basic” level. The average 12th grader reads at a “basic” level. Or… Not much.
18. Standardized Tests are Problematic Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” Donald T. Campbell, “Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change,” in Social Research and Public Policies: The Dartmouth/OECD Conference, ed. G.M. Lyons (Hanover, NH: Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College, 1975), 35.
19. Assessments have different purposes… Only Teacher-Made testsare intended to provide teachers the information they need in order to optimize instructional design… In order to find out about your students’ knowledge, skills, interests, strength, and weaknesses… YOU must assess them.
