There are many types of assessments that can be used to inform student achievement and instructional needs. Some assessments can be used for multiple purposes. Determining why your assessing students should drive the types of assessments to use and the timeframes to give them. The more common assessments are:
- Formative assessments: Any set of measurements used “to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning” (Eberly Center, 2010).
- Summative assessments: Any set of measurements that “evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark” (Eberly Center, 2010).
- Observation assessment: Educators note particular traits; such as behaviors, skills, or attitudes of a student that occur during an instructional task. Educators usually chose particular times of instruction to record observational or anecdotal notes. Anecdotal notes should be kept confidential. Anecdotal notes should be used to strengthen other assessment outcomes and to inform student placement and instruction.
- Progress monitoring: A process that involves assessing students’ academic performance, quantifying student rates of improvement or responsiveness to instruction, and evaluating the effectiveness of instruction (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2015). Progress monitoring is used monitor student progress over a set timeframe, usually related to an intervention instruction. Progress monitoring can also be used for student placement.
- Diagnostic assessments: Used to evaluate individual student abilities in order to identify strengths and deficits of a specific academic domain (Mellard, McKnight, & Woods, 2009). These assessments can be used to reduce the false positives of universal screening—students assessing higher or lower than their learning level. Diagnostic assessment data is used to inform student placement and instruction.
Universal Screening: A series of short, easy-to-administer probes of 1-3 minutes used to determine those students who are at-risk for reading acquisition. Universal screening is usually administered school or district-wide three times a year. The screening should identify 90% of the students who may be at-risk for reading acquisition. Universal screening is often used to monitor student progress and as a diagnostic assessment to determine students’ individual learning needs.
In my next post, I will further describe universal screenings and what types of assessment probes should be used to determine those students who may be at-risk for reading acquisition in Grades K-3.
References:
Eberly Center, Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation (2017). Formative vs Summative Assessment. Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved from www.cmu.edu/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html
Mellard, D. F., McKnight, M., & Woods, K. (2009). Response to intervention screening and progress-monitoring practices in 41 local schools. Learning Disabilities Research &Practice, 24(4), 186-195. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2009.00292.x
National Center for Learning Disabilities (2015). RTI Action Network. Retrieved from http://rtinetwork.org.
Ray, J.S. (2017). Tier 2 interventions for students in grades 1-3 identified as at-risk in reading. (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3826/
