Assessments: Formal or Alternative?

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Recommended: Importance of assessment to teaching

To test or not to test or how to test has become an ongoing debate within education. With the implementation of No Child Left Behind, schools have been pressured to have all students on grade level and increase test scores. Society has become obsessed with measuring and comparing students. Society has become competitive with other countries test scores. Schools are graded with Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), a way to measure the improvement in achieving standards for all students each year. Schools must publicly report their scores and there are consequences for not achieving AYP.
The struggle of how to assess students has been an on-going conflict in the recent years. There is the traditional pencil paper or the “new” alternative forms. A teacher has the difficult decision of which form of assessment is right. The teacher must choose if it should be formal or alternative or should it be a blend of both. Every student is not identical. Each student retains information differently and relay it different ways.
Norm-referenced and Criterion-referenced Testing
According to Ornstein and Hunkins (2013), Norm-referenced testing is used more commonly than any other testing. Norm-testing ranks and compares students test scores. Testing discriminates between low and high students. The content measures broad skills areas from a variety of textbooks, text, syllabi, and experts. Standards on the test are usually tested with less than four questions, and there is a variety of difficulty in the questions. Scores are interpreted by comparing student scores (Huitt, 1996). An example of Norm testing is standardized state testing.
Criterion-referenced testing measures more depth of the knowledge of skills. Criterion testing shows...

... middle of paper ...

...of assessments to assess their skills in their job market. By allowing students to have a variety of assessments a teacher is preparing them for their future.

Works Cited

Britton, T. (2011). Using formative and alternative assessments to support instruction and measurement of student learning. Found in Science Scope, 34(5), pp. 16-25. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a9ec035c-fdb9-4972-aeeb- 465c28988a3e%40sessionmgr111&vid=8&hid=109

Huitt, W. (1996). Measurement and evaluation: Criterion- versus norm-referenced testing. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/measeval/crnmref.html

Hunkins, F.P. & Ornstein A. C. (2013). Curriculum development. Boston, MA: Pearson, In Curriculum Foundations, Principals, and Issues (239-275).

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