Chapter 15- Assessments and Grading

Question 1

standardized tests

Answer 1

tests given under uniform conditions and scored according to uniform procedures, teachers do not have much say in selecting these tests

Question 2

classroom assessment

Answer 2

selected and created by teachers and can take many different forms- unit tests, essays, portfolios, projects, performances, oral presentations, critical because teaching involves making many kinds of judgements

Question 3

measurement

Answer 3

an evaluation expressed in quantitative (number) terms, tells how much, how often, or how well by providing scores, ranks, or ratings, compare one students performance on a task to a standard or the performance of other students

Question 4

assessment

Answer 4

procedures used to obtain information about student performance, broader than testing and measurement, includes all kinds of ways to sample and observe students’ skills, knowledge, and abilities, formal or informal

Question 5

formative assessment

Answer 5

ungraded testing used before or during instruction to aid in planning and diagnosis, purpose is to guide teacher in planning and improving instruction and to help students improve learning, helps form instruction and provides feedback

Question 6

pretest

Answer 6

type of formative test for assessing students knowledge, readiness, and abilities, identifies areas of weakness, not graded

Question 7

summative assessment

Answer 7

testing that follows instruction and assesses achievement, purpose is to inform the teacher and the student about the level of accomplishment attained, provides a summary for accomplishment

Question 8

norm-referenced testing

Answer 8

testing in which scores are compared with the average performance of others, people who have taken the test provide a backdrop for determining the meaning of an individual’s score

Question 9

norm group

Answer 9

large sample of students serving as a comparison group for scoring tests, can determine if the test score is above, below, or around the average for the group the person belongs to, four types: class/school, school district, national samples, international samples, formed so that a variety of demographic samples are included, tend to encourage competition and do not say whether a student is ready to move on to the next level

Question 10

criterion-referenced testing

Answer 10

testing in which scores are compared to a set performance standard, benchmark, or minimum passing score, measures the accomplishments of very specific objectives, results tell exactly what the student can or can’t do, best for teaching basic skills, standard can be arbitrary and based on the teachers experience

Question 11

reliability

Answer 11

consistency of test results, scores are reliable if a test gives consistent and stable reading of a persons abilities from one occasion to the next, measuring reliability by giving the test on two separate occasions indicates stability (test-retest reliability), if a group of people take two equivalent forms of a test and the scores on both tests are comparable, this has alternate-form reliability, refers to the internal consistency or precision of the test (split-half reliability: compare performance on half of the test questions with performance on the other half)

Question 12

standard error of measurement

Answer 12

hypothetical estimate of variation in scores if testing were repeated, the more reliable a test is, the less error there will be in the score we observe, a reliable test is defined as one with a small standard error of measurement

Question 13

confidence interval

Answer 13

range of scores within which an individual’s particular score is likely to fall, calculated using the standard error of measurement and identify a range of scores above the actual test score and below it, width of an interval represents how much a student’s score might vary due to errors of measurement

Question 14

true score

Answer 14

the score the student would get if the measurement were completely accurate and error-free, confidence interval may not include the true score

Question 15

validity

Answer 15

degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure, to have validity, the decisions and inferences based on the test must be supported by evidence, judged in relation to a particular use or purpose, content related evidence: test measures the skills covered in the course so test questions are about the important topics, criterion-related evidence: scores correlate with academic performance in school, construct-related evidence: demonstrated when the results of a test correlate with the results of another well-established, valid measure of that same construct, test must be reliable before it can be valid, and reliability does not guarantee validity

Question 16

assessment bias

Answer 16

qualities of an assessment instrument that offend or unfairly penalize a group of students because of the students’ gender, SES, race, ethnicity, etc, can arise from many factors such as content, language, or examples that might distort the performance of a group, the questions asked may centre on experiences and facts more familiar to students from the dominant culture than to students from minority groups

Question 17

culture-fair or culture-free testing

Answer 17

a test without cultural bias, unsuccessful, minority students scored the same or worse, cannot separate culture from cognition: every students learning is embedded in their own culture, and every test question emerges some kind of cultural knowledge

Question 18

objective testing

Answer 18

multiple choice, matching, true/false, short answer, fill-in tests, scoring answers does not require interpretation, variety in question types lower’s students anxieties because the entire grade does not depend on one type of question that a particular student may find difficult

Question 19

stem

Answer 19

the question part of a multiple-choice item

Question 20

distractors

Answer 20

wrong answers offered as choices in a multiple choice item

Question 21

authentic assessments

Answer 21

assessment procedures that test skills and abilities as they would be applied in real-life situations, test those capabilities and habits we think are essential, and test them in context, make tests replicate the challenges at the heart of each academic discipline

Question 22

performance assessments

Answer 22

any form of assessment that requires students to carry out an activity or produce a product in order to demonstrate learning, portfolios and exhibitions

Question 23

portfolio

Answer 23

a collection of student work in an area, showing growth, self-reflection, and achievement, contains anything that demonstrates learning in the area being taught and assessed, portfolios often display unfinished pieces, criterion referenced

Question 24

exhibition

Answer 24

a performance test or demonstration of learning that is public and usually takes an extended time to prepare, helps students understand the qualities of good work and recognize those qualities in their own productions and performances, criterion referenced

Question 25

scoring rubrics

Answer 25

rules that are used to determine the quality of a students performance, shouldnt be too specific or too general, focused on worthwhile skills that can be taught and assessed, achieve reliability not because they capture underlying agreement among raters, but because the rubrics limit options and thus limit variability in scoring

Question 26

norm-referenced grading

Answer 26

assessment of students’ achievement in relation to one another, based on comparison with others who also took the course

Question 27

grading on the curve

Answer 27

norm-referenced grading that compares student’s performance to an average level, distributes grade proportions based on the normal or bell-shaped curve, only a few students receive very high or very low grades and most receive grades between a C+ and B-

Question 28

criterion referenced grading

Answer 28

assessment of each student’s mastery of course objectives, grade represents accomplishments, may represent a certain number of objectives met satisfactorily, criteria is usually spelled out in advance

Question 29

mean

Answer 29

arithmetical average, one way to describe central tendency, a score that is representative of the whole distribution of scores

Question 30

central tendency

Answer 30

typical score for a group of scores

Question 31

median

Answer 31

middle score of a group of scores, one way to describe central tendency, half the scores are higher, half the scores are lower

Question 32

mode

Answer 32

most frequently occurring score, one way to describe central tendency

Question 33

standard deviation

Answer 33

measure of how widely scores vary from the mean, the larger the standard deviation, the more spread out the scores are in the distribution, distributions with small SDs have less variability

Question 34

variability

Answer 34

degree of difference or deviation from the mean, distributions with small SDs have less variability

Question 35

range

Answer 35

distance between the highest and lowest scores in a group

Question 36

normal distribution

Answer 36

the most commonly occurring distribution, in which scores are distributed evenly around the mean, bell-shaped curve that describes many naturally occurring physical and social phenomena, many scores fall in the middle, giving the curve its bell appearance, mean is the midpoint, SD+- 1 = 34% + 34%, SD+-2 = 14 +34 +34 +14

Question 37

percentile rank

Answer 37

percentage of those in the norming sample who scored at or below an individual’s score, shows the percentage of students in the norm group that scored at or below a particular raw score, score the same as or better than 3 quarters of the students in the norm, you were in the 75% percentile,

Question 38

grade-equivalent score

Answer 38

measure of grade level based on comparison with norming samples from each grade, obtained from separate norm groups for each grade level, generally listed as numbers like 8.3, 10.2, the whole number is the grade, and the decimal is the tenths of the year, high score means superior mastery of material at the grade level, do not mean the same thing at every grade level

Question 39

standard scores

Answer 39

scores based on the standard deviation

Question 40

Z score

Answer 40

standard score indicating the number of standard deviations above or below the mean, 78 avg on the test, you scored a 70, z score= +2, z score of 0 means you scored the mean
z = raw score-mean / SD

Question 41

t score

Answer 41

standard score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10, t score of 50 means average performance

Question 42

stanine scores

Answer 42

whole-number scores from 1 to 9, each representing a range of raw scores, 5 is the mean, SD is 2, provide a method of considering a student’s rank because each of the nine scores includes a specific range of percentile scores in the normal distribution, advantageous because it encourages teachers to view a student’s score in more general terms instead of making fine distinctions based on a few point differences

Question 43

high-stakes testing

Answer 43

standardized tests whose results have powerful influences when used by school administrators, other officials, or employers to make decisions, mismatches between what is taught and what is tested tend to occur, testing narrows curriculum, tests used have to be reliable, valid for the purposes used, and free of bias,

Question 44

accountable

Answer 44

making teachers and schools responsible for student learning, usually by monitoring learning with high stakes testing

Question 45

achievement tests

Answer 45

standardized tests measuring how much students have learned in a given content area