Standards and Assessments

Key Concepts

Definitions

Content Standards

There appears to be general agreement within the K-12 educational community that content standards are a description of what we expect students to learn in school-what they are supposed to know and be able to do. Content standards are usually developed for the traditional, core subject areas of instruction, e.g., language arts, mathematics, social studies, etc., but they might also be developed in areas such as the arts or health education. They are usually fairly broad statements, describing expectations for students at the end of several grade spans, e.g., K-4, 5-8, and 9-12, but in order for them to be useful to teachers in the classroom, they need to be expanded into more focused, specific descriptions for each grade. Often these expanded statements are grouped under each content standard or published in separate curriculum guidelines or frameworks. Content standards should be developed based on input from a broad representation of different constituencies, including teachers and other educators, parents and other members of the community, leaders from the business community, experts from higher education institutions, even secondary students. Because of the resources needed to develop content standards, they are usually developed for an entire state. It is not out of the question, however, for individual school districts to develop their own.

Performance Standards

Although many different definitions of performance standards exist in a Standards variety of fields, in education there is an emerging consensus that they refer to (a) a description of student performance that represents attainment of content standards, and (b) a procedure for determining whether a student's performance matches the description. Usually, several levels of relative attainment will be defined, e.g., basic, proficient, and advanced, resulting in performance standards for each level. Usually, performance standards are developed separately for different content areas and grade levels, although the performance levels and the procedure for judging student performance are often the same across subjects and grades. The procedure for judging the level of student performance in a content area is usually some form of standardized test, administered once a year to students in selected grade levels. However, other assessment procedures, involving portfolios, projects, exhibits, interviews, and running records are sometimes used to determine which performance standards have been met by students.

Adequate Yearly Progress

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, AYP refers to the growth needed in the proportion of students who achieve state standards of academic proficiency. Schools that receive federal Title I funds to improve learning among disadvantaged children and fail to make AYP for two years in a row are considered in need of improvement and face a range of consequences. Those consequences include offering parental choice of schools and transportation to better-performing schools, providing supplemental help to disadvantaged children and implementing various corrective actions. The criteria on which state accountability systems will be judged include: *A single statewide accountability system that applies to all public schools and school districts, with assessments and accountability applied in the same manner for all schools. *All public school students are included in the state accountability system. *State definitions of AYP mirror state expectations for continuous and substantial growth in student achievement. All students are to reach proficiency in reading and math no later than 2013-2014. States' 2001-02 assessment data will be used as a baseline for the 12-year timeline. *States must make annual decisions about the progress of all public schools and districts. States may calculate AYP for a school using up to three consecutive years of data, but if a state chooses to average data over two or three years, it must still determine whether a school or district made AYP each year. *All public schools and districts will be held accountable for the achievement of individual subgroups, including students in major racial/ethnic groups, economically disadvantaged students, limited English proficient students and students with disabilities. Accountability decisions must be based on the achievement of each subgroup, as well as on overall achievement. *A state's definition of AYP is based primarily on the state's academic assessments. The definition of AYP must also include graduation rates for high schools and an additional indicator for middle and elementary schools. *AYP will be based on separate reading/language arts and math achievement objectives. *A state's accountability system must be statistically valid and reliable. *For a school to make AYP, each subgroup and the school overall must make AYP, and the school must test at least 95 percent of students, including 95 percent of each subgroup. Schools must report all results by subgroup, but if the number of students in a group won't produce statistically reliable results, the state need not identify the school as not making AYP based on the subgroup results. States determine the minimum size for a group. Source: U.S. Department of Education Web Site

Alternative Assessment

A broad term that may refer to a range of assessment practices that are "alternatives" to a standardized, multiple choice, norm-referenced test. It may include formal and informal performance measures and portfolios.

Performance Assessment

A systematic observation of actual student performance in which students construct responses, create products, or perform demonstrations to provide evidence of their knowledge and skills. Typical performance tasks include writing short answers or essays, solving a math problem, conducting a science experiment, presenting an oral argument, assembling a portfolio of student work. The goal of performance assessment is to assess critical thinking or higher order skills rather than rote recall of information. In practice, performance assessment is often used interchangeably with alternative assessment or authentic assessment.

Portfolio

A systematic collection of selected of student work developed over a designated period of time. Portfolios can include student self-assessments. The portfolio is a tool used to demonstrate and evaluate student progress and academic achievement and can include a variety of formal and informal assessments.

Rubric

A scoring tool lists a set of criteria for scoring or rating student performance on tests, portfolios, writing samples, or other performance tasks. Key features include clearly stated criteria and levels of quality or gradations for each listed criterion. Levels of quality or scales can be numeric (4,3,2,1), or descriptive (distinguished, proficient, apprentice, novice). An alternative term for rubric is scoring guide.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks are examples of student performances that represent the proficiency levels against which student work is scored. Proficiency ratings (on a rubric, for example) are often referenced to a standard, so benchmarks are concrete representations of the stages that a student passes through in reaching a standard. The highest level benchmark represents work that meets the standard.

Multiple Measures

The use of several sources of information, in varying approaches and formats, to assess student progress. Sources can include norm-referenced tests, criterion-referenced, performance assessments, teacher judgment, classroom observation, among others. Other data can include school attendance and graduation rates to complement the late sources.

Accommodations

A means of including special education or limited English proficient students in an assessment that was developed for regular education students who speak English as a native language. There are several types of accommodations: accommodations to the test itself (for example, giving a blind student the test in Braille); accommodations to the testing procedure (for example, allowing extra time or testing in small groups) and accommodations to scoring (an alternative rubric). Students who have been tested with accommodations may or may not be included in aggregate reporting of test results depending on district or state policy. The effectiveness of accommodations to expand valid testing of special populations has not been well studied, although the practice is fairly common. Also called modifications.

Validity

A major criterion for quality assessments which shows the extent to which an assessment measures what it is supposed to measure. Validity indicates the degree of accuracy of predictions or inferences based upon an assessment score.

Reliability

The degree to which an assessment is consistent in its measurement. It is dependable and stable when administered to the same individuals on different occasions. A statistical term that defines the extent to which errors of measurement are absent from an assessment instrument. In scoring performance assessments, the extent to which raters agree in their judgments (inter-rater reliability).