Running head: ASSESSMENTS

Comparing and Contrasting Assessment Options Amanda Brightman-Uhl University of New England

EDU 722 Audrey Bartholomew September 20, 2012

ASSESSMENTS

Assessment can be an interesting topic for any special education teacher. Not only do our students take the general education classroom assessments, district and state required assessments, often with modifications, but they also take yearly diagnostic tests to see if they meeting IEP goals and objectives. I decided to compare and contrast formative and summative assessment. Even though a lot of different assessments are required throughout the year, I still feel that if I am organized and consistent I can choose what types of assessment are best for my special education students. Being a teacher of students with moderate to severe behavior problems and autism, I often have to get very creative, formative and summative assessment can greatly help me assess my students knowledge, if done correctly. Formative assessment occurs in the short term, as learners are in the process of making meaning of new content and integrating it into what they already know. Feedback to the learner is almost immediate, to help the learner be able to change his/her behavior and understandings in the right direction. Some examples of how I use formative assessment are conversations with the student one on one, asking to the point questions about the learned information, quick matching games and many observations, just to name a few. I also do a lot of closure activities to see what areas they may need to spend a bit more time on. I prefer formative assessment over all others for my special education students. I like the fact that formative assessment can be as informal as observing the learner's work or as formal as a written test. Formative assessment is the most powerful type of assessment for improving student

understanding and performance. My students need the immediate feedback and constant checking and data recording on their understanding. ASSESSMENTS Summative assessment usually takes place at the end of a large chunk of learning, with the results being primarily for the teacher's or school's use. Results more than likely take a longer period of time to be returned to the student or parent, feedback to the student is usually very limited, and the student usually has no opportunity to be reassessed. For example I personally give all my students three basic summative assessments at the end of each year, The Woodcock Johnson, The Kaufman and KeyMath. This type of assessment is very important to me and gives present levels of educational performance for each of my students at the end of a long chunk of material, in my case, the whole year. This lets me know if my students are progressing in those key academic areas, if not I take a look at the curriculum and think of new ways to better teach this particular student. I also use my summative assessment results to write my students IEP goals and objectives along with the common core standards. Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt (2013) state that a students skill development is a fundamental consideration in planning instruction, this is what I use my results for. When comparing and contrasting formative and summative assessment its important to remember one is both can be effective if done correctly. When researching about the general consensus of the strengths and weaknesses between the different types of assessment, McAlpine (2002) talks about both types of assessment and why and when you would use each. Formative assessment can be labor intensive and take more time than summative, feedback needs to be given almost immediate for it to make 3

a real impact, with summative the feedback is typically not immediate. Formative should be done often and on a continual basis to check for understanding while teaching a specific unit of study, while summative is typically given at the end of a unit or chunk of ASSESSMENTS 4

study. Formative assessment is also more open to interpretation than summative, using more personal opinion while summative assessments give specific scores. McAlpine (2002) states that formative assessment allows students and other interested parties to form a more detailed opinion of their abilities, which can then be used to inform further study, concentrating students efforts on the more appropriate areas and hence improving overall performance. While summative generally provides a concise summary of a student s abilities which the general public can easily understand either as a pass/fail. Salvia et al. (2013) points out that teachers should not rely solely on a single summative assessment to evaluate student achievement after a course of instruction. I would have to agree with this. However, instructors can facilitate reliability, for example, using a rubric and allowing the students to have copies of it, that is one method for ensuring reliability when grading a paper. If the rubric is well designed, several instructors could score the same paper using the rubric and arrive at similar scores. This is what the mainstream teachers do at my school because we have three to four of each grade level K-8. The key with summative assessment is be as consistent as possible. The validity of both formative and summative assessments can be high if done in the correct way. Validity really mean that your assessment is measuring what its intended to measure. Since the teacher is in control of the environment it is taken in and

when it is taken, its safe to say the results will be valid. Although, just because they are valid for the current teachers purposes doesn't necessarily mean they are valid in a standardized way. With any type of teacher graded assessment there is always room for personal interpretation with makes any assessment technically, less valid. What it also does in my opinion, is give a better picture of the students real abilities because the ASSESSMENTS teacher knows the student. Black & William (1998) discuss the key factors that influence the validity of formative assessment as; the teachers devotion to helping student learn, students caring about learning and wanting to improve, that teachers are encouraging, constructive and sensitive to student's feelings, that teachers identify and explain the qualities sought, students are understanding clearly what is needed and teacher sets standards appropriate to students through descriptions and examples, and that standards are explained and students understand and accepted them as appropriate. As you can see, formative assessment is done often but takes a lot of thoughtful planning to be affective. Even though formative assessment does not seem as reliable as summative because of its less concrete results, it actually takes more effort and planning to do it effectively. The more it is done and the correct practices are used, the more fluid and valid the process becomes. I find it evident that assessment, diagnostic, formative, and summative are a critical component of education. Hence, it is the responsibility of educators to utilize assessment in an effective manner, keeping in mind the purposes of, and principles 5

behind it. I find it especially crucial that we investigate and utilize diagnostic and formative/summative assessment, all which in my opinion are underused yet important components of the educational process.

ASSESSMENTS References Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5, 7-74. McAlpine, M. (2002). Principles of assessment. Retrieved from: http://www.caacentre.ac.uk/dldocs/Bluepaper1.pdf Salvia, J., Ysseldyke, J. E., & Bolt, S. (2013). Assessment in special

and inclusive education. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.