Assessments Gone Rogue!!!
What Do We Assess When We Assess Reading?
Accurate and Useful Assessments
Three components of successful reading assessments:
- Cognition-skills and strategies used by the students as they develop as readers
- Observation- how students read in relation to a specific task, text, and setting, as well as relating to observation of such learning and knowledge.
- Interpretation- from student performance in a particular place and time on an assessment task, on their more broad abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
Afflebach, P. (2012). Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K-12 (2nd. ed.) Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
What Do Assessment Scores Mean?
- Administrators- to prove a reading program's effectiveness and well as student and teacher accountability
- Parents- gives information about child's progress and to make a home-school connection for supporting the child
- Teachers- to inform instruction, evaluate students and construct grades, identify strengths and weaknesses
- Student- communicate progress, motivate and encourage, test taking strategies, build independence in reading
Afflebach, P. (2012). Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K-12 (2nd. ed.) Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
The CURRV Model-Informed Use of Reading Assessment
This model (Leipzig & Afflerbach, 2000) gives 5 criteria on which to examine a reading assessment.
- Consequences-positive and negative
- Usefulness-does it provide useful information to guide instruction and future assessments?
- Roles & Responsibilities- Students taking testing seriously by developing strategies and learning from outcomes
- Reliability- accuracy and precision of the assessment and process
- Validity- Construct validity, and ecological validity
How to Assess an Assessment!!
- What inferences can you make about a student's assessment and evaluate the validity of that inference.
- Assess your assessment.
- Talk with your students about an assessment and their understanding of it's purpose
- Develop an assessment inventory looking at their uses, types of assessment, and frequency.
Afflebach, P. (2012). Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K-12 (2nd. ed.) Newark, DE: International Reading Association.