Assessment Health Article

Assessment

The evaluation of personality variables, achievement, skill, or ability.

Assessment is used to accomplish different objectives: to learn more about the individual being tested; to rank individuals; for student placement; to identify specific problems and needs; and to improve learning or instruction. Tests of different types are administered and used by teachers, psychologists, and counselors to help students understand themselves and measure their performance against that of their peers. Assessments may be used to evaluate a child's ability or skill at a given point in time; alternatively, they may be used to predict a child's aptitudes or future capabilities.

Traditional standardized tests rely on specific, structured procedures and instructions given to all test-takers by the test administrator (or to be read by the test-takers themselves). With young children, this presents a problem. Young children (preschool and early elementary years) do not have past experience and familiarity with tests and have limited understanding of the expectations of testing procedures. With young test-takers, the test administrator represents a significant factor that influences success. The child must feel comfortable with the test administrator and feel motivated to complete the test exercise. The administrator helps support the test-taker's attention to the test requirements. The testing environment affects all test-takers, but may represent a more significant variable for the youngest test-takers.

Assessment of children is also challenging given the rapid changes in growth experienced during childhood. In childhood, it is difficult to ensure that the test-taker's responses will be stable for even a short period of time. Thus, psychologists, educators, and other test administrators are careful to take the stage of childhood into account when interpreting a child's test scores.

Norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced assessments

In norm-referenced assessments, one person's performance is interpreted in relation to the performance of others. A norm-referenced test is designed to discriminated between individuals in the area being measured. A criterion-referenced assessment allows interpretation of a test-taker's score in relation to a specific standard, or criterion; this type of test is designed to help evaluate whether a person has met a specific level of performance. A timed test of arithmetic facts with a specific performance goal, such as 100 problems answered in 60 seconds with no more than one error, is an example of a criterion-referenced test.

Testing trends

In the 1990s, there has been a trend toward increased use of standardized tests to evaluate performance in U. S. schools. Faced with declining test scores by U.S. students when compared to others around the world, concerned parents and communities have sought ways to measure the performance of schools. Thus, local school districts and some states imposed standardized tests to evaluate knowledge and skills, on the assumption that testing is an effective way to measure outcomes of education. In fact, in the late 1990s the 32-member National Council on Education Standards and Testing appointed by Congress recommended that national achievement standards be created. The council also suggested that a nationwide assessment effort be implemented to measure students' progress.

A shortcoming of standardized testing is that it assumes all students can be evaluated by the same instrument. Because most standardized tests are normreferenced—the test measures a student's test performance against the performance of other test-takers—students and educators focus their efforts on the test scores, and schools develop curriculum to prepare students to take the test.

Many educators feel that standardized testing does little to improve learning, and they acknowledge that there are no perfect assessment tools that work will for evaluating all students. Researchers have designed and tested alternative assessments, including performance, authentic, and portfolio assessments; journals; interviews; and attitude inventories. All have been criticized for requiring too much time to administer and having imprecise criteria. For schools, the biggest challenge in applying alternative assessments relates to grading, since the alternative assessments are not structured to result in a ranking or traditional grade.

Objectives of assessment

When considering what assessments to use, educators begin by defining the purpose or goal for each test. Examples of a purpose for testing might be to establish rankings for students to comply with mandates for records. Assessment is one way to meet that goal. In addition, psychologists have found that some forms of assessment motivate students because they allow recognition and reward of good performance. Another reason to administer standardized tests is to evaluate students for class placement or ability grouping. Improvement of learning and/or instruction may also be a goal of assessment. Students' learning behaviors can be improved if helpful feedback is provided relating to the outcome of the assessment.

Using traditional standardized test results along with results of alternative assessments can provide a comprehensive evaluation of the student. By using more than one source of data, the teacher or psychologist will obtain an objective picture of the student's development.