ASSESSMENT AND EDUCATIONAL DECISIONS ABOUT STUDENTS
Assessment provides information for decisions about students; schools, curricula, and programs; and educational policy. This section discusses several types of educational decisions made about students.
It puts assessment into a broader context to give you a better idea of the purposes for which assessments are used (see Figure 1.1 ).
Understanding the features of different types of decisions will help you evaluate various assessment techniques that you may be considering.
There is no simple answer to the question, “Is this a good assessment procedure?” An assessment
procedure may serve some types of decisions very well, others not so well.
Understanding the different types of decisions discussed in this section will also help you explain to parents why you used various assessments with their children.
Finally, although you may not be required to make all of these types of student decisions yourself, by the time your students have completed their education they will have experienced virtually all of them.
Instructional Decisions
Teachers make decisions about students at the rate of one every 2 to 3 minutes ( Shavelson & Stern, 1981 ).
That’s about 20 decisions every class period! Sound teaching decisions require sound information.
Sound assessment procedures gather sound information.
Researchers estimate that teachers may spend from one third to one half of their time in assessment-related activities
( Stiggins, Conklin, & Associates, 1992 ).
To help you think about the many decisions a
teacher must make, we have organized a set of
questions teachers must answer before, during,
and after teaching. Examples of assessment methods that may give you useful information for making the decisions are listed after each question.