In 1990, the California Assessment Collaborative was created to support development and implementation of teacher-designed performance assessments. Four key practices help ensure that assessment serves instruction: articulating standards and assessment design; building teacher capacity for using assessment to improve instruction; building student…

Students find performance-based assessment exciting because the tasks are intriguing and mirror real-life experiences. As this vignette of a middle school interdisciplinary coastal ecology unit shows, hands-on, teacher-made assessments can effectively evaluate students' mastery of process skills such as observing, classifying, inferring,…

The usefulness of traditional concepts of validity and reliability, developed for large-scale assessments, for the classroom context is explored. Alternate frameworks that situate these constructs in teachers' work in classrooms are presented, and their use in an assessment course for preservice teachers is described. (SLD)

This booklet examines fundamental technical and implementation issues involved with large-scale, on-demand performance assessments and teacher-constructed, classroom-based performance assessments, especially for use with students who have disabilities. It discusses definitions and core concepts, outlines theoretical matters, reviews research on…

Teaching students to use language creatively and for communication requires creative and communicative tests. Creative tests allow students to give divergent answers; communicative tests allow for both meaningful language usage and meaningful contexts. This discussion of creative, communicative tests has four parts: (1) a review of formats that…

The Austin Independent School District (AISD) became interested in evaluation and testing skills of teachers when district and school averages on competency ratings in the area were among the lowest since 1979. School districts, as well as teacher preparation programs, should devote serious attention to the improvement of these teacher skills. In…

The Multi-Digit (MDT) testing procedure is a computer-scored testing innovation conceptualized in 1982. It is fully compatible with multiple choice and true/false tests well suited for the testing of discreet terms and concepts such as in fill-in-the-blank examinations. The student reads the question and selects the appropriate response from an…

The evaluation tools written by teachers are rarely valid or reliable. One teaching aid that can help in the creation of an effective evaluation instrument is called a test map. A test map is a systematic method to consider variables that are important in the construction of the format of a test. Five variables that are discussed in the test…

The general goal of the Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE) Test Use Project is to examine and describe the features and applications of tests and other assessment methods that contribute to the improvement of instruction. The Test Use Project is therefore examining the nature of current assessment practice, the kinds of information such…

Reports the results of a study of the match between teacher-made tests and level of instructional objectives for 74 secondary social studies teachers. Concludes that: (1) only a slight majority of teachers think higher order objectives are important, and (2) that few translate this opinion into their instruction or testing. (JDH)

This article discusses the validity issue in teacher-made tests. Seventh-grade students' comments about their responses to a test designed to illustrate faulty items suggests students are quite proficient in using secondary clues to figure out correct answers. Teacher comments suggest teachers are unaware they provide such clues. (Author/JAZ)

Multiple-choice tests are here to stay. They should do more than test for rote memory. They should simultaneously test for both knowledge of subject matter and for thinking skills applied to that subject matter. Suggestions to help teachers prepare better test questions are made. (RM)

Describes the use of the Apple Macintosh and MULTIPLAN spreadsheet to record and analyze test data. Provides step-by-step instructions on data entry, item difficulty and discrimination calculations, test reliability, score distribution, and graphing of distributions. (JM)

Reports that reading instructional level scores of a teacher constructed informal reading inventory, the commercially prepared Basic Reading Inventory, the Metropolitan Achievement Test, and students' actual level of placement in books are roughly comparable but that the Wide Range Achievement Test reading subtest places children much higher. (FL)

In every instance in the process of constructing and using a test, the microcomputer can aid the classroom teacher. However, the teacher will not apply the microcomputer to classroom testing without added training both in classroom testing and in using the microcomputer. (BW)