Assessment Mid-term

Project

A complex assignment involving more than one type of activity and production. It can take a variety of forms; some examples are mural construction, shared service project or other collaborative or individual effort.

Norm

A distribution of scores obtained from a norm group. It is the mid-point (median) of scores or performance of the students in that group. Fifty percent will score above and 50 % below the norm.

Performance Based Assessment

A test of the ability to apply knowledge in a real-life setting. Assessment of the performance is done using a rubric or analytic scoring guide to aid in objectivity.

Essay Test

A test that requires students to answer question in writing; responses can be brief or extensive.

Norm-Referenced Tests

A tests in which a students' or a groups' performance is compared to that of a norm group. The student or group scores will not fall evenly on either side of the median established by the original test takers. The results are relative to the performance of an external group and are designed to be compared with the norm group providing a performance standard. Often used to measure and compared students, schools, districts, and states on the basis of norm-established scales of achievement.

Authentic Assessment

A type of performance assessment which students are given educational tasks that are meaningful.

Analytic scoring

A type of rubric scoring that separates the whole into categories of criteria that are examined one at a time.

Rubric

A written description of the characteristics of standards used to judge a process or product.

Performance Based Assessment

Any assessment technique that requires students to physically carryout a complex extended process or product.

High Stakes Testing

Any testing program whose results have important consequences for students, teachers, schools, and/or districts. Such stakes may include promotion, certification, graduation, or denial/approval of services and opportunity.

Four traditional reasons why teachers assess

Diagnose students' strengths and weaknesses, monitor students' progress, assign grades, and determine a teachers' own instructional effectiveness.

Alternative Assessment

Many educators prefer the describe alternative to traditional, standardized, norm-or criterion referenced traditional paper and pencil testing. It may be open-ended question, working out a problem, or performance.

Process

A general method of doing something, involving steps or operations which are usually ordered and/or interdependent. It can evaluated as part of an assessment, as in the example of evaluating a students' performance during pre-writing exercises leading up to the final production of an essay or paper.

Subjective Test

A test in which the impression or opinion of the assessor determines the score or evaluation of performance; this type of test does not provide the learner with answers in advance.

Criterion Reference Test

A test in which the results can be used to determine a student's progress toward mastery of a content area. Performance is compared to an expected level of mastery in a content area rather than to other students' scores. The scores have meaning in terms of what the student knows or can do, rather than how the test-takers compares to a reference or norm group.

Competency Test

A test intended to establish that a student has met established minimum standards of skills and knowledge and is thus eligible for promotion, graduation, or certification.

Offensiveness

A test is offensive when it contains elements that would insult any group of test takers on the basis of their personal characteristics, such as religion or race.

Unfair Penalization

A test item unfairly penalizes test takers when there are elements in the item that would disadvantage a group because of its members' personal characteristics, such as gender or ethnicity.

Portfolio Assessment

A collection of students' work used for assessment purposes either to present students' best work or to demonstrate educational growth.

True-False Item

A common binary-choice item in which a student's two options regarding the accuracy of a presented statement are true or false.

Profile

A graphic compilation of performance of an individual on a series of assessments.

Cognitive Objective

A learning objective that has four main components; audience, condition, behavior, and degree.

Norm Group

A random group of students selected by a test developer to take a test to provide a range of scores and establish the percentiles of performance for use in establishing scoring standards.

Percentile

A ranking scale ranging from a low of 1 to high of 99, with 50 as a median score. It indicates the test-takers' standing relative to the norm-group standard.

Rubric

A scoring guide used in subjective assessments. It can also be an explicit description of performance characteristics corresponding to a point on a rating scale.

Achievement Test

A standardized test designed to efficiently measure the amount of knowledge and/or skill a person has acquired, usually as a result of classroom instruction. Such testing produces a statistical profile used as a measurement to evaluate student learning in comparison with a standard or norm.

Norm Referenced Assessment

A standardized test that can be compared to a sample group of students (norm group).

Portfolio

A systematic and organized collection of student's work that exhibits to others the direct evidence of a student's efforts, achievements, and progress over a period of time.

Objective Test

A test for which the scoring procedure is completely specified enabling agreement among different scorers.

Multiple -Choice Tests

A test in which students are presented with a question or an incomplete sentence or idea. The students are expected to choose the correct or best answer/ completion from a menu of alternatives.

Standards

Agreed upon values used to measure the quality of student performance, instructional method, curriculum, etc.

Three types of selected response

Alternative response, multiple choice, matching.

Informal Reading Inventory

An assessment in which students read a series of passages that increase in difficulty. As the student reads the teacher records the errors.

Mastery Test

An assessment that shows mastery of a given skill or concept. If a student struggles to pass, he or she may be lacking a prerequisite skill.

Screening Assessments

An assessment used to identify students' problems and need for more assessment.

Criterion Referenced Assessment

An assessment where the student's performance is compared to a standard or criterion.

Formative Assessment

An informal assessment used to improve teaching.

Standardized Test

An objective test that is given and scored in a uniform manner. It is carefully constructed and items are selected after trials for appropriateness and difficulty.

Outcome

An operationally defined educational goal, usually a culminating activity, product, or performance that can be measured.

Item Analysis

Analyzing each item on a test to determine the proportions of students selecting each answer; can be used to evaluate student strengths and weaknesses, may point to problems with the test's validity and to possible bias.

Formative Assessment

Assessment occurring during the process of a unit or a course.

Diagnostic Assessments

Assessment of students learning for two purposes: identifying learning targets and to suggest reasons why students haven't mastered learning goals.

Evaluation

Both qualitative and quantitative descriptions of progress towards and attainment of project goals; using collected information (assessments) to make informed decisions about continued instruction, programs, and activities.

Three components of educational assessment

Cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.

The two types of educational standards

Content standard and performance standard

Authentic Assessment

Evaluating by asking for the behavior that the learning is intended to produce; ideally mirroring and measuring student performance in a real world context.

Summative Assessment

Formal assessments used to measure students' progress at the end of a semester or at the end of a unit of instruction to determine or judge student skills and knowledge or effectiveness of a plan or activity.

Assessment Bias

If an assessment instrument offends or unfairly penalizes a student because of personal characteristics-such as race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status-the instrument is biased against that student.

Disparate Impact

If test scores of different groups (for example, different ethnic or religious groups) are decidedly different, this is described as an assessment procedure having a disparate impact.

Judgmental Item Improvement

Improving an item's quality based on the opinions of student and/or nonstudent reviewers.

FTCE Assessment

In an educational context, the process of observing learning; describing, collecting, recording, scoring, and interpreting information about a student or one's own learning.

Holistic Method

In assessment, assigning a single score based on an overall assessment of performance rather than scoring or analyzing dimensions individually. The product is considered to be more than the sum of its parts, and so the quality of a final product or performance is evaluated rather than the process or dimension of performance.

Portfolio Assessment

May be used in a variety of ways. Each piece may be individually scored or it may be assessed merely for the presence of required pieces, or a holistic scoring process might be used and an evaluation made on the basis of an overall impression of the student's collected work.

Mean

One of several ways of representing a group with a single, typical score. It is figured by adding up all the individual scores in a group and dividing them by the number of people in the group. This is also known as the average and can be affected by extremely low or high scores.

Alternative Assessment

Performance assessments

Measurement

Quantitative description of student learning and qualitative description of student attitude.

Constructive response questions

Questions that require students to construct or create something to answer the question rather than choosing from a given list.

Scale Score

Scores based on scale ranging from 001 to 999. These are useful in comparing performance in one subject area across classes, schools, districts, and other large populations, especially monitoring change over time.

Performance Assessment

Requires students to produce a product or demonstrate a process, solve a problem involving several steps , or carry out an activity that demonstrates proficiency with a complex skill.

Constructed Response

Requires students to produce answers rather than select them.

Scoring Criteria

Rules for assigning a score or the dimensions of proficiency in performance used to describe a student's response to a task. May include rating scales, checklists, answer keys, and other scoring tools.

Performance Criteria

Standards by which student performance is evaluated. It helps assessors maintain objectivity and provide students with important information about expectations, giving them a target or goal to strive for.

Benchmark

Student performance standards (the levels) of student competence in a content area); an actual measurement of group performance against an established standard at defined points along the path toward the standard. Subsequent measurements of group performance use the benchmarks to measure progress toward achievement.

Journals

Students' personal records and reactions to various aspects of learning and developing ideas. A reflective process often found to consolidate and enhance learning.

Quartile

The breakdown of an aggregate of percentile rankings into four categories: the 0-25th, 26th-50th, etc.

Curriculum Alignment

The degree to which a curriculum's scope and sequence matches a testing program's evaluation measures.

Metacognition

The knowledge of one's own thinking processes and strategies, and the ability to consciously reflect and act on the knowledge of cognition to modify those processes and strategies.

Self-Assessment

The learner uses an assessment list or rubric and benchmarks to assess his or her own work.

Reliability

The measure of consistency for the assessment instrument. The instrument should yield similar results over time with similar populations in a similar circumstance.

VCEE Assessment

The process for obtaining information that is used for making decisions about students, curricula, programs, and educational policy.

Product

The tangible and stable result of a performance or task. An assessment is made of student performance based on evaluation of the product of a demonstration of learning.

Validity

The test measures the desired performance and appropriate inferences can be drawn from the results. The assessment accurately reflects the learning it was designed to measure.

Selected Response

These items assess whether a student can recognize, rather than recall, certain information. They are generally used when you are trying to evaluate knowledge of a broad range of subject matter.

Multiple Choice

This test consists of a stem, a question or an incomplete sentence, that introduces a problem or incomplete thought. The student selects the appropriate response from a set of three or more options or alternatives. The options may be words, numbers, symbols, or phrases.

Matching

This test consists of two parallel columns with words, numbers, or symbols in one column that must be matched to words, numbers, or symbols in the other column.

Alternative Response

This type of test item uses an alternate response format consisting of two opposing options, such as true/false, yes/no, example/non example.

Essay

Type of performance assessment. This is an open ended question or prompt that can assess the students' ability to formulate problems; to organize, integrate, and evaluate ideas and information; or to apply knowledge and skills in a written response.

Running Record

Used to assess reading as a student reads from a benchmark book or selection.

Differentiation

Using instructional practices to meet the needs, abilities, and interests of students regardless of ability.