STUDENT

ASSESSMENT: THE ELUSIVE SCORE

Schools

assess learners for many reasons, including the important

diagnostic task of identifying what learners know so that

individual learning goals can be developed and

implemented.

Other kinds

of assessment measure students' progress against their

own earlier work, against other students' work, or

against a standard.

Assessment

standards can be applied to many situations -

sometimes productively and sometimes not. Test results

are used to measure how well students are meeting

achievement standards established by the district.

Some tests

are used to decide who will earn course credit and to

determine who will move on to the next grade or earn a

diploma. And, as we well know, test scores are often used

- by politicians, the public and educators

themselves

- to compare schools and school districts.

As

professionals and citizens concerned with education, we

all need a better basic knowledge of the different types

of tests and their proper uses. This is important because

even though most tests are neither good nor bad in

themselves, misuse of tests can cause great harm.

First,

there are two basic kinds of achievement tests:

norm-referenced tests, which show how well students

perform compared to other students around the country,

and criterion-referenced tests, which show how well

students perform against a pre-established standard.

Norm-referenced

tests are usually designed by testing companies, are used

to test thousands of students each year, and include

questions that range in difficulty.

Students

are not expected to answer all the questions correctly.

Test results are interpreted by looking at the relative

scores of all those taking the test and typically

reported in percentiles.

The persons

with the best scores will be at the top of the chart,

sometimes no matter how many questions were left

unanswered.

The

well-known ITBS, or Iowa Test of Basic Skills, is a

norm-referenced test.

Criterion-referenced

tests are usually shorter tests designed to find out

specific information such as whether students understand

a process, possess a certain skill, or have mastered a

particular body of knowledge.

These tests

do not typically judge one student against another;

instead, scores are measured against performance criteria

designed to measure identified concepts and skills.

The GHSGT,

or Georgia High School Graduation Tests, are

criterion-referenced tests.

Standardized

tests are criticized on a number of grounds. The most

serious complaint is that multiple choice and

short-answer questions ask for simple factual recall and

do not adequately reveal a student's abilities in

critical analysis, conceptual understanding, or the

ability to apply newly learned principles to an

unfamiliar situation.

These are

higher-order thinking skills, an extremely important part

of what students should be taught, but they typically are

not measured well by standardized tests, whether

norm-referenced or criterion-referenced.

In

addition, standardized tests do not reflect

responsiveness to specifics of local curriculum. The

biggest misuse of standardized tests, however, is their

tendency to be used to compare schools and school

systems.

Due to the

growing concern regarding the shortcomings of

standardized tests, many educators encourage a movement

toward a more "authentic" assessment tool which

will gauge students' performance on real-world

challenges.

This type

of performance-based testing can take various forms such

as projects based on performance tasks and portfolios of

their work over time. These types of assessment could

provide a more accurate picture of students' mastery of

what is actually being taught, providing credible

evidence of what students know and are able to do.

It is,

however, much easier said than done. There are, in fact,

pros and cons to all forms of assessment.

As

professional educators, we understand there is no single

best approach to student assessment. The best approach is

to include a variety of types of assessment at different

times and with different groups of learners to serve

different purposes.

We also

realize that, whatever our plan of assessment, two

realities will occur: first, any assessment will likely

be criticized; second, the public will demand benchmarks

to indicate how well we are doing.

Whether

right or wrong, for better or worse, schools are judged

assess our assessment, and we keep our eyes on the

educational horizon, ready to change if necessary to do

our best for our students.

In this

way, we can continue to make Coweta County a place where

good schools are a great investment.