Testing, Teaching, and Learning A Guide for States and School Districts (1999) / Chapter Skim
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4 Assessments of Student Performance
4 Assessments of Student Performance
Pages 42-73
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From page 42... ...
Because of the great weight attached to test scores, the critics contended, teachers tended to overemphasize test-taking strategies or the relatively low-level skills the tests measured, rather than focus on more challenging abilities or demanding content. At the same time, critics pointed out, many schools placed less emphasis than they might have placed on topics or subjects not tested, such as science and social studies.
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From page 43... ...
Like the critics of Title I testing, assessment critics contended that the traditional tests used in most schools and school districts typically, norm-referenced, multiple-choice tests narrowed the curriculum to the low-level knowledge and skills tested and provided inadequate and sometimes misleading information about student performance. In part, these critics drew on data showing the effects of the tests on instruction.
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From page 44... ...
commercial tests designed for off-the-shelf use are deliberately designed to sell in many states; since standards vary widely from state to state, such tests are unlikely to line up with any single state's standards. Thus states using commercial tests are likely to find gaps between the tests and their standards.
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From page 45... ...
The ability of tests to accomplish the reformers' aims of reporting student progress on standards and informing instruction depends on the validity of the inferences one can draw from the assessment information. For individual students, a one- or two-hour test can provide only a small amount of information about knowledge and skill in a domain; a test composed of performance items can provide even less information (although the quality of the information is quite different)
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From page 46... ...
But even tests that do capture the results of instructional improvement may not be as informative as they might; the ways the tests are scaled and results are reported tell little about what caused students to succeed or not succeed. Determining the instructional sensitivity of assessments requires careful study of classroom practices and their relations to student performance.
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From page 47... ...
And a study of successful high-poverty schools in Texas found that such schools administered frequent assessments and used the data in their instructional planning (Ragland et al., 1999~. These schools used assessment data from classroom assessments, district tests, and state tests to develop a well-rounded picture of student performance in order to make decisions about instructional strategies.
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From page 48... ...
Such measures should work together to support the coherence of instruction. ~ uestions to Ask ~ Do schools conduct regular assessments of individual students' performance and use the data to adjust their instructional programs?
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From page 49... ...
Each district has created a mosaic of assessment information that includes frequent assessments of individual student progress at the classroom level; portfolios and grade conferences on student work at the school level; performance assessments at the district level; and standards-referenced tests at the state level. All of these are compiled into reports that show important constituencies what they need to know about student performance.
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From page 50... ...
The law's emphasis on testing in grade 3 and above followed practice in the states, many of which have in recent years reduced their use of tests in the early grades. Only 5 states test students in grade 2; 3 test in grade 1; and 2 test in kindergarten (Council of Chief State School Officers, 1998~.
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From page 51... ...
The four purposes are: Instructional Improvement. Measures aimed at supporting teaching and learning are designed to inform students, parents, and teachers about student progress and development and to identify areas in which further instruction is needed.
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From page 52... ...
Instructional improvement and identification rely on measures such as direct observations of student activities or portfolios of student work, which raise issues of reliability and validity if used for accountability (Graue, 1999~. Program evaluations include a wide range of measures including measures of student physical well-being and motor skills, social development, and approaches to learning, as well as cognitive and language development which may be prohibitively expensive to collect for all students.
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From page 53... ...
For school accountability in grades ~ and 2, states and districts should gauge school quality through the use of representative sampling, rather than the assessment of every pupil. · Federal research units, foundations, and other funding agencies should promote research that advances knowledge of how to assess early reading and mathematics performance for both instructional and accountability purposes.
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From page 54... ...
The assessment of young children should provide schools and districts with information about student performance that is related to the instructional goals for older students. The following examples describe two approaches to measuring the performance of young children that provide information on the progress of students in early grades toward standards with methods that are appropriate and that yield valid and reliable information.
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From page 55... ...
The law also requires states to develop alternate assessments for children who cannot participate in state and district-wide assessments, and to report to the public on the number of students with disabilities participating in regular and alternate assessment programs, and the performance of such students on the assessments. These provisions break new ground.
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From page 56... ...
. Although state policies vary widely, one survey found that 37 states in 1998 allowed exemptions from all assessments for students with disabilities, and another 10 allowed exemptions from some assessments for such students (Council of Chief State School Officers, 1998~.
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From page 57... ...
Only a small number of the most cognitively disabled students, whose educational goals differ from the regular curriculum, will be required to take alternate assessments under the IDEA. Despite the common use of such accommodations, however, there is little research on their effects on the validity of test score information, and most of the research has examined college admission tests and other postsecondary measures, not achievement tests in elementary and secondary schools (National Research Council, 1997a)
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From page 58... ...
· Federal research units, foundations, and other funding agencies should promote research that advances knowledge about the validity and reliability of different accommodations and alternate assessment practices. ~ Are clear guidelines in place for accommodations that permit students with disabilities to participate in assessments administered for accountability purposes?
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From page 59... ...
According to Maryland state policy, "all students have a legal right to be included to the fullest extent possible in all statewide assessment programs and to have their assessment results be a part of Maryland's accountability system." To accomplish this goal, the state department of education has developed guidelines for when students should receive accommodations, which accommodations are permissible for which tests, and when students may be excused or exempted from the tests. Under the policy, accommodations: · Enable students to participate more fully in assessments and to better demonstrate their knowledge and skills; · Must be based on individual students' needs and not a category of disability, level of intensity, level of instruction, time spent in mainstream classroom, or program setting; · Must be justified and documented in the individualized education program (IEP)
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From page 60... ...
ASSESSING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS The requirement in the 1994 Title I statute to include "all students" in assessments and accountability provisions also refers to students for whom English is a second language. In order to "provide for the participation of all students in the grades being assessed," the law called for states to assess English language learners "to the extent practicable, in the language and form most likely to yield accurate and reliable information on what these students know and can do to determine the students' mastery of skills in subjects other than English." As with students with disabilities, this provision represents a substantial departure from conventional practice for English-language learners.
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From page 61... ...
Excluding English-language learners from assessments raises the same issues that excluding students with disabilities brings to the fore: excluded students "do not count," the exclusions throw into question the meaning and validity of test score reports, and students, parents, and teachers miss out on the information tests provide. Yet including such students also poses substantial challenges, and doing so inappropriately can produce misleading results.
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From page 62... ...
However, some have argued that time is not the critical factor and instead have recommended that students demonstrate language proficiency before states and districts determine whether they will participate in assessments. A few states use such determinations, formally or informally (Council of Chief State School Officers, 1998~.
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From page 63... ...
· States and districts should describe the methods they use to screen English-language learners for accommodations, exemptions, and alternate assessments, and they should report the frequency of these practices. · Federal research units, foundations, and other funding agencies should promote research that advances knowledge about the validity and reliability of different accommodation, exemption, and alternate assessment practices for English-language learners.
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From page 64... ...
~ Is there evidence that the assessment, even with accommodations, cannot measure the knowledge or skill of particular students or groups of students before alternate assessments are administered? ~ Are assessments provided in languages other than English when the numbers of students who can take such assessments is sufficiently large to warrant their use?
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From page 65... ...
The results for students who take the Spanish TAAS or for those who are exempted are not included in the totals used for accountability purposes; however, the Spanish-language results are reported for each school. In 1997, 2.4 percent of the students in grades 3-8 were exempted because of limited English proficiency; another 1.48 percent of students took the Spanish TAAS.
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From page 66... ...
The traditional method of reporting test results is in reference to norms; that is, by comparing student performance to the performance of a national sample of students, called a norm group, who took the same test. Normreferenced test scores help provide a context for the results by showing parents, teachers, and the public whether student performance is better or worse than that of others.
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From page 67... ...
_ Reporting results from tests according to standards depends first on decision rules about classifying students and schools. Creating those decision rules is a judgmental process, in which experts and lay people make decisions about what students at various levels of achievement ought to know and be able to do (Hambleton, 1998~.
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From page 68... ...
One issue surrounding the use of achievement levels relates to the precision of the estimates of the proportions of students performing at each level. Large margins of error could have important ramifications if the performance standards are used to reward or punish schools or school districts; a school with large numbers of students classified as "partially proficient" may in fact have a high proportion of students at the "proficient" level.
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From page 69... ...
Assessment results provide the most useful information when they report student performance against standards. To the extent possible, reports indicating performance against particular standards or clusters of 1 1 · 1 · · 11 -- I -- -- r-stanuarus provide ~nstruchonany useful information.
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From page 70... ...
The reports should state clearly the limits of the information available and indicate the inferences that are appropriate. ·~ Figure 4-1 is an example of a school report that was developed by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
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From page 71... ...
points out, despite these findings, states and school districts continue to report misleading information about school performance by publishing overall average test scores, without taking into account the range of performance within a school. Overall averages can be misleading because the variation in performance within schools is much greater than the variation among schools (Willms, 1998~.
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From page 72... ...
A report that disaggregates test scores by race would indicate the performance of the 30 black students. Although this result would accurately portray the performance of these particular students, it would be inappropriate to say the results show how well the school educates black students.
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From page 73... ...
The ratings are based on student performance on the state test, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, the dropout rate, and the attendance rate. In order to earn a coveted "exemplary" or "recognized" rating, districts or schools must not only have a high overall passing rate on the TAAS, a low overall dropout rate, and a high overall attendance rate, but the rates for each group within a school or district African Americans, Hispanics, whites, and economically disadvantaged students under the state's designations must also exceed the standard for each category.
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