Assessing Academic Achievement

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Assessing Academic Achievement

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• Achievement tests measure student learning in
  academic subjects
• reading, spelling, written expression,
  mathematics, general information and specific
  scholastic subjects such a social studies,
  history, and science.
• Academic areas are subdivided into particular
  skill clusters
• reading includes word identification, and word
  attack them, word comprehension, passage
  comprehension and oral reading skills

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• Curriculum Based Assessment Of Academic
  Achievement
• CBA is an evaluation approach that measures
  educational success based on subject progress in
  the school or classroom curriculum
• involves using instructional activities occur in
  the classroom or in other instructional settings
  as the basis for making assessment decisions
• homework, class work, teacher-made test
• various sources are used including teacher
  observations and impressions, student responses
  during instructional activities, scores and
  information from norm-referenced achievement test

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• Norm-Referenced Achievement Testing
• group tests are administrated to groups of
  students at the same time
• usually brief screening measures to provide an
  overall of achievement rather than specific
  diagnostic information
• multiple-skill achievement tests usually contain
  several subtests for measuring proficiency in
  several domains (e.g. reading, mathematics,
  spelling and writing subtests)

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Comparing Curriculum- Based and Norm-Referenced
Assessments
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• CBA
• is excellent for instructional situations that
  are informal, flexible, students centered
  assessments
• measuring daily and short-term progress
• connecting progress with student instruction
• tracking a students progress in learning
  specific skills that may be unique to an
  individual student, class, program, or school

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• Norm-Referenced
• excels in staffing situations requiring formal,
  standardized test scores that allow comparison of
  the performance of individual students with
  students from similar peer groups
• better for tracking long-term progress every year
  or a number of years
• only valid method for comparing achievement
  across groups of students and among schools,
  districts, and state
• scores provide accurate information about overall
  progress and strengths and weaknesses in broad
  subject areas

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• CBA and Norm-Referenced actually complement each
  other.

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• Why we assess achievement?
• To screen students who may have deficits in
  achievement
• to identify, classify, and place students with
  disabilities
• to determine present levels of academic
  performance
• to develop IEP's
• to plan instructional programs and develop
  intervention activities
• to evaluate student progress
• to monitor program effectiveness

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Curriculum Based Assessment Strategies And
Procedures

• main premise is that the more we know as teachers
  about what and how our students are learning, the
  better we can meet learning needs by planning
  appropriate instructional activities and
  accurately measuring student progress.

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• authentic task, charts, checklist, contracts,
  error analysis, games, interviews, observations,
  portfolio assessment, presentations,
  questionnaires, rubrics, scales, self-assessment,
  student journals, student profiles, task
  analysis, test, exams, and quizzes, written
  records.

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• Classroom Assessment Techniques
• specific types of CBA help teachers determine
  what their students think about class and how
  well they are learning class material
• application cards, chain notes, directed
  translation, exam evaluations, memory cells,
  minute papers, quick summaries, student generated
  test questions, two-minute reflections
• Comprehensive Inventory Of Basic Skills, Revise
  (CIBS-R) 

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Norm-Referenced Testing

• hundreds of available test
• some are survey batteries
• others provide comprehensive diagnostic
  information

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group achievement tests

• most often are survey batteries (brief screening
  test-overview of achievement)
• usually given at elementary level and
• measure basic skills reading, language,
  mathematics, and study skills
• high schools use group achievement test less
  frequently

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• group testing administration procedures often
  cause difficulties for diverse and at risk
  students and students with learning problems
• they require reading ability
• often student answers are written on separate
  sheet
• require students to work independently and to
  self monitor
• and attend to test taking task

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individual achievement tests

• advantages
• coordination among subtest such as reading, math,
  and spelling
• reduction of errors due to common administration
  and scoring across subtest
• cost savings by using one test to assess
  achievement in multiple subjects
• time-saving by using one test to evaluate
  achievement and all subject areas
• comparison performance across subject areas with
  common norms 

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• disadvantages
• low reliability among subtest, reducing the
  validity of comparison across subject areas
• emphasis on broad coverage of many subject areas
  rather than in-depth coverage of one or more
  areas
• limitations of the amount of specific diagnostic
  information available

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• Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revise
  (PIAT-R)
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• Kaufman Test Of Educational Achievement (K-TEA)
•  Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 2nd Ed.
  (WIAT-II)