Basic Concepts in Assessment

1. Measurement as used in education is the quantification of what students have learned through the use of
tests, questionnaires, rating scales, checklists, and other devices.
It answers the question “how much does a student learn or know?”

2. Assessment refers to the full range of information gathered and synthesized by teachers about their students
and their classrooms (Arend, 1994).
It looks into “how much change has occurred on the student’s acquisition of a skill, knowledge or value
before and after a given learning experience.”

3. Evaluation is a process of making judgments, assigning value or deciding on the worth of students’
performance.
It answers the question “how good, adequate or desirable is it?”
Measurement and assessment are essential to evaluation.
Educational Measurement
Knowledge of subject matter –
 can be measured through standardized test results (the measurement procedure is testing)
 Can be measured through perceptions (ask a group of experts to rate student’s or teacher’s knowledge of
the subject matter in a scale of 1 to 5)

Types of Measurement
1. Objective (as in testing)
Objective measurements are more stable than subjective measurements in the sense that repeated
measurements of the same quantity or quality of interest will produce more or less the same outcome.

2. Subjective (as in perceptions)

Some facets which cannot be captured by objective procedures which can be done by subjective
methods:
Aesthetic appeal of a product or project

It maybe best to use both methods when possible

Educational Assessment
Assessment is a method of evaluating personality in which an individual , living in a group meets and solves a
variety of lifelike problems. (Stiggins, 1996)

3 Principal Features of Assessment (Cronbach, 1997)

1. The use of a variety of techniques
2. Reliance on observations
3. Integration of information
 Assessment focuses not only on the nature of the learner but also on what to be learned and how it is to
be learned.

Purposes of Educational Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

1. Improvement of student learning
2. Identification of students’ strengths and weaknesses
3. Assessment of the effectiveness of a particular teaching strategy
4. Appraisal of the effectiveness of the curriculum
5. Assessment and improvement of teaching effectiveness
6. Communication with and involvement of parents in their children’s learning

Types of Classroom Assessment

1. Official assessment
2. Sizing up assessment
3. Instructional assessment
“The important question is not how assessment is defined but whether assessment information is used…
“ Palomba & Banta
Relevance of Assessment
1. Students
- They become actively involved in the learning process
- They take responsibility for their own learning
- They can monitor changes in their learning patterns
- They become aware of how they think, learn and accomplish tasks, how they feel about their own work
2. Teachers
 It gives teachers information about a student’s knowledge and performance
 It tells them how their students are currently doing
 It can reveal which teaching methods and approaches are effective
 It can provide direction as to how they can help their students more and what they should do next
3. Parents
 They should be involved in the assessment process
 They are a valued source of assessment information on the educational history and learning habits of
their children
4. Administrators and Program Staff
 They use assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses of the program.
 They designate program priorities, assess options and lay down plans for improvement
 They make decisions for promotion and retention of students and arrangement of faculty development
programs
5. Policymakers
 Assessment provides information about students’ achievements – quality of education provided by
schools.
 With this information, government agencies can set or modify standards, reward or sanction schools and
direct educational resources.
 Assessment results can serve as basis for formulation of new laws

 It also provides information about students as a group.

 Indicates what the experiences of students add up to and what these experiences imply about educational
programs.
 It enables the educators to examine whether curriculum makes sense in its entirety and whether students as a
result of all their experiences, have the knowledge, skills, and values that graduates should possess.

Evaluation
Evaluation involves an interpretation of what has been gathered through measurement, in which value
judgments are made about performance

Sources of evaluative information

 Cumulative record
 Personal contact
 Analysis
 Open-ended themes and diaries
 Conferences
 Testing

Basic guidelines in educational assessment, measurement and evaluation

1. Teachers need to know how much they are doing
2. Students need to know how well they are doing
3. Evidence, feedback, and input data for knowing how well the students and teachers are doing should come
from a variety of sources
4. Evaluation is a continuing process to check on programs and modify strategies to promote desired behavior
5. The procedures used in assessing student learning must be compatible with instructional objectives
6. Evaluation is a reciprocal process
7. A teacher’s responsibility is to facilitate student learning and accountable for it

Tests and Their Uses

“The most important aspect of student evaluation in most classrooms involves the tests teachers make and
administer to their students.” - Gronlund & Linn

Definition of Test
 A systematic procedure for measuring an individual’s behavior. (Brown).
 A formal and systematic way of gathering information about the learner’s behavior, usually through paper
and pencil procedure. (Airasian)
 A set of questions with an accepted set of presumably correct answers, designed to gather information
about some individual characteristics, like scholastic achievement. (Posner, 1995)
 A measuring instrument whose general characteristics is to force responses from a student. These are
considered to be indicative of the pupil’s skill, attitude and knowledge.

Types of Tests
Ways of Categorizing tests:
1. As to mode of response
a. Oral test – a test wherein the test taker gives his answer orally
b. Written test – a test where the answers to questions are written by the test taker
c. Performance test – one in which the test taker creates an answer or a product that demonstrates his
knowledge or skill, as in cooking and baking.

2. As to ease of quantification of response

a. Objective test – a test wherein the students’ answers can be compared and quantified to yield a
numerical score.
b. Subjective test – a test which is not easily quantified as students are given the freedom to write their
answer to a question, such as in an essay test.

3. As to mode of administration
a. Individual test – a test administered to one student at a time.
b. Group test – one administered to a group of students simultaneously.

4. As to test constructor
a. Standardized test – a test prepared by an expert or specialist. This type of test sample behavior
under uniform procedures.
b. Unstandardized test – one prepared by teachers for use in classroom, with no established norms for
scoring and interpretation of results.

5. As to the mode of interpreting results

a. Tests that yield norm-referenced test – a test that evaluates a student’s performance by comparing it
to the performance of a group of students on the same test.
b. Tests that yield criterion-referenced test – test that measures a student’s performance against an
agreed upon or pre-established level of performance.

6. As to the nature of answer.

a. Personality test – a test designed for assessing some aspects of an individual’s personality. Some
areas tested in this kind of test include the following: emotional and social adjustment, dominance
and submission, value orientation, disposition, emotional stability, frustration level, and degree of
introversion or extroversion.
b. Intelligence test – a test that measures the mental ability of an individual.
c. Aptitude test – a test designed for the purpose of predicting the likelihood of an individual’s success
in a learning area or field of endeavor.
d. Achievement test – a test given to students to determine what a student has learned from formal
instruction in school.
e. Summative test – a test given at he end of instruction to determine the students’ learning and assign
grades.
f. Diagnostic test – a test administered to students to identify their specific strengths and weaknesses in
past and present learning.
g. Formative test – a test given to improve teaching and learning while it is going on. A test given after
teaching the lesson for the day is an example.
h. Socio-metric test – a test in discovering the learners’ likes and dislikes, preferences, and their social
acceptance, as well as social relationships existing in a group.
i. Trade test – a test designed to measure an individual’s skill or competence in an occupation or
vocation.

Testing
Testing is a formal, systematic procedure of gathering information (Russel & Airasian, 2012).
A process of administering a test:
 Test Preparation
  Test Administration
 Collection of Test Papers

Functions of Testing
1. Instructional Functions
 Tests facilitate the clarification of meaningful learning objectives
 Tests provide a means of feedback to the instructor and the student
 Tests can motivate learning
 Tests are useful means of overlearning

2. Administrative Functions
 Tests provide mechanism of quality control
 Tests facilitate better classification and placement decisions.
 Tests can increase the quality of selection decisions
 Tests can be a useful means of accreditation, mastery or certification

3. Research & Evaluation

 Tests are utilized in studies that determine effectiveness of new pedagogical techniques
 Evaluators utilize to determine the impact and success of their programs.

4. Guidance Functions
 Tests can be of value in diagnosing an individual’s special aptitudes and abilities.

Non-test are devises that do not force students to give their responses.
 Usually based on teacher’s direct observations as students perform the assigned tasks.
 The results of non-test supplement the information that test results provide.

Pre-assessment or diagnostic assessment

Before creating the instruction, it’s necessary to know for what kind of students you’re creating the instruction.
Your goal is to get to know your student’s strengths, weaknesses and the skills and knowledge the posses before
taking the instruction. Based on the data you’ve collected, you can create your instruction.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is used in the first attempt of developing instruction. The goal is to monitor student
learning to provide feedback. It helps identifying the first gaps in your instruction. Based on this feedback
you’ll know what to focus on for further expansion for your instruction.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment is aimed at assessing the extent to which the most important outcomes at the end of the
instruction have been reached. But it measures more: the effectiveness of learning, reactions on the instruction
and the benefits on a long-term base. The long-term benefits can be determined by following students who
attend your course, or test. You are able to see whether and how they use the learned knowledge, skills and
attitudes.

Confirmative assessment

When your instruction has been implemented in your classroom, it’s still necessary to take assessment. Your
goal with confirmative assessments is to find out if the instruction is still a success after a year, for example, and
if the way you're teaching is still on point. You could say that a confirmative assessment is an extensive form of
a summative assessment.
Norm-referenced assessment

This compares a student’s performance against an average norm. This could be the average national norm for
the subject History, for example. Other example is when the teacher compares the average grade of his or her
students against the average grade of the entire school.

Criterion-referenced assessment

It measures student’s performances against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards. It checks
what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Criterion-referenced
tests are used to evaluate a specific body of knowledge or skill set, it’s  a test to evaluate the curriculum taught
in a course.

Ipsative assessment

It measures the performance of a student against previous performances from that student. With this method
you’re trying to improve yourself by comparing previous results. You’re not comparing yourself against other
students, which may be not so good for your self-confidence. 

What's the difference between analytic and holistic rubrics?

 Analytic rubrics identify and assess components of a finished product.

 Holistic rubrics assess student work as a whole.

Which one is better?

Neither rubric is better than the other. Both have a place in authentic assessment, depending on the following:

 Who is being taught? Because there is less detail to analyze in the holistic rubric, younger students may
be able to integrate it into their schema better than the analytic rubric.
 How many teachers are scoring the product? How many teachers are scoring the product? Different
teachers have different ideas about what constitutes acceptable criteria. The extra detail in the analytic
rubric will help multiple grades emphasize the same criteria.

HOLISTIC RUBRICS

A holistic rubric is the most general kind. It lists three to five levels of performance, along with a broad
description of the characteristics that define each level. The levels can be labeled with numbers (such as 1
through 4), letters (such as A through F) or words (such as Beginning through Exemplary). What each level is
called isn’t what makes the rubric holistic — it’s the way the characteristics are all lumped together.

Suppose you’re an unusually demanding person. You want your loved ones to know what you expect if they
should ever make you breakfast in bed. So you give them this holistic rubric:

The main advantage of a holistic rubric is that it’s easy on the teacher — in the short run, anyway. Creating a
holistic rubric takes less time than the others, and grading with one is faster, too. You just look over an
assignment and give one holistic score to the whole thing.

The main disadvantage of a holistic rubric is that  it doesn’t provide targeted feedback to students, which
means they’re unlikely to learn much from the assignment. Although many holistic rubrics list specific
characteristics for each level, the teacher gives only one score, without breaking it down into separate qualities.
This often leads the student to approach the teacher and ask, “Why did you give me a 2?” If the teacher is the
explaining kind, he will spend a few minutes breaking down the score. If not, he’ll say something like, “Read
the rubric.” Then the student has to guess which factors had the biggest influence on her score. For a student
who really tries hard, it can be heartbreaking to have no idea what she’s doing wrong.

Holistic rubrics are most useful in cases when there’s no time (or need, though that’s hard to imagine)
for specific feedback. You see them in standardized testing — the essay portion of the SAT is scored with a 0-6
holistic rubric. When hundreds of thousands of essays have to be graded quickly, and by total strangers who
have no time to provide feedback, a holistic rubric comes in handy.
ANALYTIC RUBRICS

An analytic rubric breaks down the characteristics of an assignment into parts, allowing the scorer to itemize
and define exactly what aspects are strong, and which ones need improvement.

This is where we see the main advantage of the analytic rubric: It gives students a clearer picture of why they
got the score they got. It is also good for the teacher, because it gives her the ability to justify a score on paper,
without having to explain everything in a later conversation.

Analytic rubrics have two significant disadvantages, however: (1) Creating them takes a lot of time.
Writing up descriptors of satisfactory work — completing the “3” column in this rubric, for example — is
enough of a challenge on its own. But to have to define all the ways the work could go wrong, and all the ways
it could exceed expectations, is a big, big task. And once all that work is done, (2) students won’t necessarily
read the whole thing. Facing a 36-cell table crammed with 8-point font is enough to send most students straight
into a nap. And that means they won’t clearly understand what’s expected of them.

Still, analytic rubrics are useful when you want to cover all your bases, and you’re willing to put in the time to
really get clear on exactly what every level of performance looks like.