Making Classroom Assessments Reliable and Valid


Book Description

Making Classroom Assessments Reliable and Valid by Robert J. Marzano will convince you that classroom assessments should become the primary method for formally measuring student learning over other types of assessment in education. Read about the key advantages of classroom assessments over interim, end-of-course, and state assessments in how to assess student learning and measure growth over time. Marzano also addresses the validity and reliability of classroom assessments and how to improve those metrics before bringing them to their rightful place in K-12 assessments. This book outlines how to revamp validity and reliability to match technical advances made in classroom assessment, instead of matching large-scale assessment's traditional standards. Using this book, teachers, schools, and districts can design classroom assessments that are equally if not more reliable and valid than traditional large-scale assessments. How this book will convince you to use classroom assessments: Consider the history of large-scale assessments in US education and the purpose of standardized testing. Inspect the importance of and future role of classroom assessment. Explore the three mathematical models of reliability, as well as the three major types of validity. Understand the principles of assessment for learning and the importance of measuring students' individual and comparative growth. Use the provided formulas to create classroom assessments that match traditional interim or end-of-year assessments in reliability and validity. Contents: Introduction: The Role of Classroom Assessment Chapter 1: Discussing the Classroom Assessment Paradigm for Validity Chapter 2: Designing and Scoring Parallel Assessments Chapter 3: Discussing the Classroom Assessment Paradigm for Reliability Chapter 4: Measuring Growth for Groups of Students Chapter 5: Transforming the System Using the New Classroom Assessment Paradigms Appendix




Classroom Assessment and Educational Measurement


Book Description

Classroom Assessment and Educational Measurement explores the ways in which the theory and practice of both educational measurement and the assessment of student learning in classroom settings mutually inform one another. Chapters by assessment and measurement experts consider the nature of classroom assessment information, from student achievement to affective and socio-emotional attributes; how teachers interpret and work with assessment results; and emerging issues in assessment such as digital technologies and diversity/inclusion. This book uniquely considers the limitations of applying large-scale educational measurement theory to classroom assessment and the adaptations necessary to make this transfer useful. Researchers, graduate students, industry professionals, and policymakers will come away with an essential understanding of how the classroom assessment context is essential to broadening contemporary educational measurement perspectives. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




An Introduction to Student-Involved Assessment FOR Learning


Book Description

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Written for pre-service teacher candidates who have little or no classroom experience, Rick Stiggins’ multiple award-winning and market-leading text focuses squarely on preparing new teachers to assess students in classrooms, providing them with their initial orientation to classroom assessment and to the challenges they will face in monitoring student learning, in using the assessment process, and its results to benefit their students. The text clearly instructs teaching candidates on how to gather dependable evidence of student learning using quality assessments and how to use those assessments to support and to certify student learning. The book has an exceptionally strong focus on integrating assessment with instruction through student involvement in the assessment process; it is clearly the most non-technical and hands on practical orientation to assessment validity and reliability yet developed. It offers five easy-to-understand keys to effective classroom assessment practice that any teacher can learn to apply. The presentation covers the full range of classroom assessment methods, when and how to use them and how to communicate results in ways that support learning. Examples and models are offered across grade levels and schools subjects to assist candidates in learning these things. The treatment of student-involved assessment, record keeping, and communication as an instructional intervention is a unique entity of the text. Specific assessment strategies are offered throughout for helping students see the learning target from the beginning and then watch themselves move progressively close over time until they achieve ultimate learning success. Showing how to use assessment to accurately reflect student achievement and how to benefit–not merely grade–student learning, the text examines the full spectrum of assessment topics, from articulating targets, through developing quality assessments and communicating results effectively.




Teacher-Made Assessments


Book Description

Assessment is not only a measure of student learning, but a means to student learning. This bestselling book guides you in constructing and using your own classroom assessments, including tests, quizzes, essays, and rubrics to improve student achievement. You will learn how to weave together curriculum, instruction, and learning to make assessment a more natural, useful part of teaching. Find out how to... ensure your assessments are fair, reliable, and valid; construct assessments that meet the level of cognitive demand expected of students; create select-response items and understand technology-enhanced items that are increasingly being used on assessments; use constructed-response items and develop scoring criteria such as rubrics; and analyze student results on assessments and use feedback more effectively. This second edition features updated examples that reflect the Common Core State Standards as well as other content standards and new, useful samples of teacher-friendly techniques for strengthening classroom assessment practices. No matter what grade level or subject area you teach, this practical book will become your go-to resource for designing effective assessments.




Knowing What Students Know


Book Description

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.




Classroom Assessment & Grading that Work


Book Description

Robert J. Marzano distills 35 years of research to bring you expert advice on the best practices for assessing and grading the work done by today's students.




Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards


Book Description

The National Science Education Standards address not only what students should learn about science but also how their learning should be assessed. How do we know what they know? This accompanying volume to the Standards focuses on a key kind of assessment: the evaluation that occurs regularly in the classroom, by the teacher and his or her students as interacting participants. As students conduct experiments, for example, the teacher circulates around the room and asks individuals about their findings, using the feedback to adjust lessons plans and take other actions to boost learning. Focusing on the teacher as the primary player in assessment, the book offers assessment guidelines and explores how they can be adapted to the individual classroom. It features examples, definitions, illustrative vignettes, and practical suggestions to help teachers obtain the greatest benefit from this daily evaluation and tailoring process. The volume discusses how classroom assessment differs from conventional testing and grading-and how it fits into the larger, comprehensive assessment system.




Performance Assessments for Adult Education


Book Description

In the United States, the nomenclature of adult education includes adult literacy, adult secondary education, and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) services provided to undereducated and limited English proficient adults. Those receiving adult education services have diverse reasons for seeking additional education. With the passage of the WIA, the assessment of adult education students became mandatory-regardless of their reasons for seeking services. The law does allow the states and local programs flexibility in selecting the most appropriate assessment for the student. The purpose of the NRC's workshop was to explore issues related to efforts to measure learning gains in adult basic education programs, with a focus on performance-based assessments.




Modern Classroom Assessment


Book Description

Modern Classroom Assessment offers an applied, student-centered guide to the major research-based approaches to assessment in today’s modern classroom. Rather than simply list basic assessment formats with a few examples, as many textbooks do, award-winning professor and scholar Bruce Frey’s book fully explores all five key approaches for teacher-designed assessment—Traditional Paper-and-Pencil, Performance-Based Assessment, Formative Assessment, Universal Test Design, and Authentic Assessment —while making abstract concepts and guidelines clear with hundreds of real-world illustrations and examples of what actual teachers do. Offering a variety of engaging learning tools and realistic stories from the classroom, this text will give any reader a strong foundation for designing modern assessments in their own classrooms.




SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment


Book Description

The Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment provides scholars, professors, graduate students, and other researchers and policy makers in the organizations, agencies, testing companies, and school districts with a comprehensive source of research on all aspects of K-12 classroom assessment. The handbook emphasizes theory, conceptual frameworks, and all varieties of research (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) to provide an in-depth understanding of the knowledge base in each area of classroom assessment and how to conduct inquiry in the area. It presents classroom assessment research to convey, in depth, the state of knowledge and understanding that is represented by the research, with particular emphasis on how classroom assessment practices affect student achieventment and teacher behavior. Editor James H. McMillan and five Associate Editors bring the best thinking and analysis from leading classroom assessment researchers on the nature of the research, making significant contributions to this prominent and hotly debated topic in education.