CT-7400: Assessment Practices

Brown, E. A., (2019). Assessing your assessments: 4 steps and 9 questions for overhauling testing. District Administration, 55(6), 31-33.
This short article discusses a survey of different assessment tools and how schools can be “data rich, information poor.” Schools are beginning to rethink their standardized assessments regarding the data they provide and what they measure.

Lasater, K., Bengtson, E., & Albiladi, W. S. (2020). Data use for equity?: How data practices incite deficit thinking in schools. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 1-10.
The authors discuss how schools and districts use standardized testing data and how this contributes to deficit thinking. They also outline how focusing on data in strict accountability ways diverts attention from instructional practices.

Kane, M. T., & Saskia, W. (2019). Perspectives of the validity of classroom assessments. In S. M. Brookhart & J. H. McMillan (Eds.), Classroom assessment and educational measurement (1st ed.,pp. 11-26). Routledge.
Read Chapter 1: Perspectives on the Validity of Classroom Assessments. This chapter makes a distinction about assessment from a functional vs. measurement perspective. The functional perspective is how educators use assessment for classroom purposes. This chapter provides a good overview of different ways teachers use assessment in the classroom. It also touches on measurement issues (i.e., does the assessment measure what you think it is measuring).

Brookhart, S. M. (2016). How to make decisions with different kinds of student assessment data. ASCD.
Read Chapter 1: An Introduction to Different Kinds of Data (pp. 1-17). Read Chapter 6: Putting It All Together: Basing Decisions on Data (pp. 89-104) and Chapter 7: How to Make Decisions With Different Kinds of Student Assessment Data (pp. 105-120). Chapter 1 reviews different kinds of data that schools and teachers can use for decision-making. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss how schools and teachers can use data to improve student learning.

Center on Standards and Assessment Implementation (CSAI), & WestEd. (2018). Using student assessment data to support decision-making (5 pages).
This short article discusses several ways schools and teachers can effectively analyze data and use data to improve student learning.