By Daniel Koretz
How do you pass judgement on the standard of a college, a district, a instructor, a scholar? by means of the attempt ratings, after all. but for all of the speak, what academic assessments can and can’t let you know, and the way ratings may be misunderstood and misused, is still a secret to so much. The complexities of checking out are mostly neglected, both simply because they're unrecognized, or simply because they could be—well, complex. encouraged by way of a favored Harvard path for college kids with out an intensive arithmetic history, Measuring Up demystifies academic testing—from MCAS to SAT to WAIS, with all of the alphabet soup in among. Bringing statistical phrases right down to earth, Daniel Koretz takes readers throughout the so much primary matters that come up in academic checking out and exhibits how they practice to a couple of the main debatable concerns in schooling this present day, from high-stakes checking out to big schooling. He walks readers via daily examples to teach what exams do good, what their limits are, how simply exams and rankings will be oversold or misunderstood, and the way they are often used sensibly to assist notice how a lot young ones have discovered. (20080521)
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But this sort of measurement is clearly impractical, Lindquist maintained, for many reasons. The criterion is delayed, for one. We really can’t afford to wait a decade or two to find out whether this year’s eighth-graders can use algebra in their adult work. Even if we were to wait a decade or two, the criterion behaviors—in this case, applying algebra successfully when appropriate—are often infrequent. I use algebra often; most of you probably don’t, so an observer would have to watch you for a long time to learn whether you had acquired these skills and dispositions.
This is an oversimplification. It is true that norm-referenced reporting does not necessarily provide information about whether performance has reached reasonable expectations, but as the examples above show, it is often useful—indeed sometimes essential—for precisely that purpose. Moreover, norm-referenced reporting can be paired with other forms of reporting that directly compare performance with expectations, such as standards-based reporting (discussed below). Almost all states now report student performance in comparison with expectations.
One such source of information is that gleaned by teachers in the course of their own instruction and classroom testing. An astute teacher can observe many things that are difficult to test, but her judgments lack the standardization that test scores offer and are therefore much less comparable from one setting to another. For example, we know that teachers’ grading is on average much more lenient in high-poverty schools than in low-poverty schools. By assembling information from several sources that have 44 What We Measure different strengths and weaknesses, we can obtain a more complete view of what students know and can do.