Schools today are often mistakenly evaluated by standardized test results, sometimes leading teachers to employ instructional approaches detrimental to their students' education. This booklet, Appropriate and Inappropriate Tests for Evaluating Schools,
uncovers why many of these tests are ineffective and presents more appropriate assessments as alternatives.
The Mastering Assessment series is a set of fifteen practical, easy-to-use booklets covering a wide range of topics related to educational assessment and accountability. These groundbreaking booklets put the most relevant information on assessment at teachers’ fingertips and provide an important resource for educators looking to learn the ins and outs of becoming “assessment literate.” Paired with the series' Facilitator's Guide (available for download at no additional charge from Pearson's Instructor Resource Center), Mastering Assessment is the perfect tool for building assessment literacy either in self-study or a professional development program.
Don't miss all the books in the Mastering Assessment series by W. James Popham:
• Appropriate and Inappropriate Tests for Evaluating Schools
• Assessing Students’ Affect
• Assessing Students with Disabilities
• Assessment Bias: How to Banish It
• Classroom Evidence of Successful Teaching
• College Entrance Examinations: The SAT and the ACT
• Constructed-Response Tests: Building and Bettering
• How Testing Can Help Teaching
• Interpreting the Results of Large-Scale Assessments
• Portfolio Assessment and Performance Testing
• Reliability: What Is It and Is It Necessary?
• Selected-Response Tests: Building and Bettering
• The Role of Rubrics in Testing and Teaching
• Test Preparation: Sensible or Sordid?
• Validity: Assessment’s Cornerstone
Table of Contents:
The Emergence of Test-Based Accountability
A Source of National Pride
The Arrival of ESEA
A Profession Sleeps
What Can Be Done?
Two Types of Instructionally Insensitive Tests
Traditionally Constructed Standardized Achievement Tests
In Pursuit of Score-Spread
Linking Items to Suitably Spread Variables
Standards-Based Tests Built for a Particular State
Instructionally Sensitive Accountability Tests
A Manageable Number of Extraordinarily Significant Curricular Aims
Succinct, Teacher-Palatable Assessment Descriptions
Reports for Each Curricular Aim for Individual Students
Instructionally Meaningful Reports
A Continuum of Instructional Sensitivity
About the Author :
W. James Popham is a nationally recognized expert on educational testing. For 30 years he taught courses at UCLA in instructional methods for prospective teachers, and courses in evaluation and measurement. He has also authored over 25 books in the fields of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
