What is assessment literacy? It is a handful of fundamental understandings about the testing concepts and procedures that influence educational decisions. And it just might be the most cost-effective means of real school improvement. With characteristic humor and aplomb, assessment expert W. James Popham strips away the psychometrician-speak and…

If you're at all skeptical that "formative assessment" is just another buzzword, then here's a book that will change the way you think about the role that formative assessment can play in transforming education into a more powerful and positive process. Renowned expert W. James Popham clarifies what formative assessment really is, why…

In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today's professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of professional development interest for many years to…

If a person were to ask an educator to identify the two most important attributes of an education test, the response most certainly would be "validity and reliability." These two tightly wedded concepts have become icons in the field of education assessment. As far as validity is concerned, the term doesn't refer to the accuracy of a test. Rather,…

Any reauthorized version of the No Child Left Behind Act is almost certain to call for monitoring students' academic progress. However, the current method for such monitoring is educationally harmful. The author offers five recommendations for building a more defensible means to monitor student progress.

Despite repeated calls for educators to get more instructional mileage out of the assessment data they have at hand, two deterrents typically stand in the way of most educators' effective use of test data. First, there's a missing "realization", and second, there's a missing "skill". Educators who possess both this realization and this skill will…

The "instructional sensitivity" of a test represents the degree to which students' performances on that test accurately reflect the quality of the instruction that was provided specifically to promote students' mastery of whatever is being assessed. In other words, an instructionally "sensitive" test would be capable of distinguishing between…

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

Because of misconceptions regarding appropriate measurement strategies, it is necessary to draw distinctions between two major measurement methodologies, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced measurement, as they relate to determining basic academic capabilities. Norm-referenced measures are used to ascertain an individual's performance in…

There is considerable controversy over high stakes tests and teachers' competencies in high stakes testing. Presents a pseudo self-test for teachers to determine how muddle-free their own test-talk really is. This tongue-in-cheek test includes 17 items with assessment-related words or phrases and a choice of definitions from which teachers may…

The importance of educational accountability and assessment literacy is recognized as a long-term challenge to the educational system. The complexities in becoming an assessment literate and provide an opportunity to the educators to display their effective learning is discussed.

The nature of classroom assessment is changing. Teachers are being urged to rely less on traditional tests and more on innovative measurement methods, such as performance tests and portfolio assessments. This digest describes a strategy whereby student services personnel can play a leadership role in familiarizing classroom teachers and school…

The term "rubric" refers to a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students' constructed responses (written compositions, oral presentations, or science projects). Although educators rave about rubrics, the vast majority are instructionally fraudulent. Problems arise when rubrics are too task-specific or general or lengthy and…

Discusses which kinds of data educators should respect and which they should reject. Asserts that most state accountability tests fail to produce the kinds of data that will improve teaching and learning. Teachers can get the data they need from their own instructionally useful classroom assessments. (WFA)

Specialists in curriculum, instruction, and assessment typically work with colleagues in their own field. It is argued that such isolationism is educationally harmful, especially during today's era of heightened accountability for educators. To diminish excessive specialization by curriculum, instruction, and assessment personnel, amelioration…