Four Purposes of Educational Assessment
Purposes and Characteristics of Educational Assessment
Focus Questions
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:
1. What are the four principal uses of educational assessment?
2. What are the main characteristics of good educational assessment?
3. What makes a test unfair?
4. Can a test be fair but invalid?
5. Can a test be valid but unreliable?
6. How can you determine the reliability of a test?
7. How can you improve test validity and reliability?
2
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He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts— for support rather than illumination.
—Andrew Lang
Not to imply that many teachers are like drunken men leaning on their lampposts, but it is true that many use the results of their assessments a little like crutches to support their summaries of the characteristics, virtues, and vices of their students. For these teachers, test results and grades serve as handy statistics that summarize all the important things that can be commu- nicated to school administrators and parents.
Others use the results of their assessments in very different ways. They see them not as sum- marizing important accomplishments, but as tools that suggest to both the learner and the teacher how the teaching–learning process can be improved. For these teachers, assessments are less like lampposts against which a tired (but sober) teacher can lean and rest: They are more like the light on top of the posts that throws back the darkness and shows teacher and student where the paths are, so that they need not stumble about like blindfolded pigs in a supermarket.
Purposes and Characteristics of Educational Assessment Chapter 2
Chapter Outline 2.1 Four Purposes of Educational Assessment
Planning for Assessment
Test Blueprints
2.2 Test Fairness
Content Problems
Trick Questions
Opportunity to Learn
Insufficient Time
Failure to Make Accommodations for Special Needs
Biases and Stereotypes
Inconsistent Grading
Cheating and Test Fairness
2.3 Validity
Face Validity
Content Validity
Construct Validity
Criterion-Related Validity
2.4 Reliability
Test-Retest Reliability
Parallel-Forms Reliability
Split-Half Reliability
Factors That Affect Reliability
How to Improve Test Reliability
Chapter 2 Themes and Questions
Section Summaries
Applied Questions
Key Terms
Four Purposes of Educational Assessment Chapter 2
2.1 Four Purposes of Educational Assessment These distinctions highlight the difference between summative assessment and formative assessment.
As we saw in Chapter 1, summative assessment is assessment that occurs mainly at the end of an instructional period. Its chief purpose is to provide a grade. In a real sense, it is a sum- mation of the learner’s achievements.
Formative assessment is assessment that is an integral and ongoing part of instruction. Its central purpose is to provide guidance for both the teacher and the learner in an effort to improve learning. Its goal is formative rather than summative. Assessment designed specifi- cally to enhance learning—in other words, formative assessment—is the main emphasis of current approaches to educational assessment.
Diagnostic assessment in education, like diagnosis in medicine, has to do with finding out what is wrong, why it’s wrong, and how it can be fixed. Diagnosis of automobile mechani- cal difficulties is much the same: The mechanic runs tests to find out what is wrong and to develop hypotheses about how the problem can be repaired. Diagnostic assessment in educa- tion is no different. It has three purposes:
1. Finding out what is wrong (uncovering which learning goals have not been met)
2. Developing hypotheses about why something is wrong (suggesting possible reasons why these goals have not been accomplished)
3. Suggesting ways of repairing what is wrong (devising interventions that might increase the likelihood that instructional objectives will be reached)
The examiners look for the causes of failure so they can suggest ways of fostering success. Like the physician and the mechanic who diagnose in order to repair, so, too, does the educator.
A fourth kind of assessment is placement assessment. It describes assessment undertaken before instruction. Its main purpose is to provide educators with information about student placement and about learning readiness. Placement assessment can also influence choice of content and of instructional approaches (Figure 2.1).
Planning for Assessment
While we can distinguish between assessment used for placement, diagnosis, formation, or summation, these distinctions do not contradict the fact that all forms of assessment share the same goals. Simply put, the general aim of all assessment is to help learners learn. Accordingly, educational assessment and instruction are part of the same process; assessment is for learning rather than simply of learning.
It is worth noting that the assessment of learners is, in a sense, an assessment of the effec- tiveness of the teacher and of the soundness and appropriateness of instructional and assess- ment strategies. This doesn’t invariably mean, of course, that when students do well on their tests they have the good fortune of having an astonishingly good teacher. Some students do remarkably well with embarrassingly inadequate teachers, and others perform poorly with the most gifted of instructors.
Four Purposes of Educational Assessment Chapter 2
Still, if your teaching is aimed at admirable, clearly stated, and well-understood instructional objectives, and if most of your charges attain these targets, the assessments that tell you (and the world) that this is so also reflect positively on your teaching.
As you plan your instruction and your assessment, the following guidelines can be highly useful.
Communicating Instructional Objectives Know and communicate your instructional objectives. Not only do teachers need to under- stand what their learning objectives are, but students need to know what is expected of them—hence the importance of having clear instructional objectives and of communicating them to students. If students understand what the most important learning goals are, they are far more likely to reach them than if they are just feeling their way around in the dark. For example, at the beginning of a unit on geography, Mrs. Wyatt tells her seventh graders that at the end of the unit, they will be able to create a map of their town to scale. To do this, Mrs. Wyatt explains, she will have to teach them some map-making skills and the math they will need to calculate the scaling for the map. She then begins a lesson on ratios.
Aligning Goals, Instruction, and Assessments Match instruction, assessment, and grading to goals. In theory, this guideline might seem obvious; but in practice, it is not always highly apparent. For example, one of my high school
Figure 2.1: Four kinds of educational assessment based on their main purposes
Assessment can serve at least four distinct purposes in education. However, the same assessment procedures and instruments can be used for all these purposes. Further, there is often no clear distinction among these purposes. For example, diagnosis is often part of placement and can also have formative functions.
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Summative Assessment
Summarizes extent to which
instructional objectives have
been met
Provides basis for grading
Useful for further
educational or career decisions
Diagnostic Assessment
Identifies instructional
objectives that have not been
met
Identifies reasons why
targets have not been met
Suggests approaches to remediation
Formative Assessment
Designed to improve the
teaching/ learning process
Provides feedback for teachers and
learners to enhance learning and motivation
Enhances learning; fosters self-regulated
learning; increases motivation
Placement Assessment
Assesses pre-existing
knowledge and skills
Provides information for
making decisions about learner’s
readiness
Useful for placement and
selection decisions
Four Purposes of Educational Assessment Chapter 2
