Tell us your thoughts on white papers…
September 24, 2010 at 11:31 am 3 comments
Riverside’s Research and Measurement Services team is considering the development of a series of white papers on topics related to educational assessment and measurement. The goal of the white papers is to inform interested audiences, in a general non-technical way, about current assessment issues and topics.
They are interested in gathering your thoughts. In particular, they are interested in your feedback and comments on:
- White papers in general – do educators, especially school administrators, find them useful and of interest?
- Is there a preferred format for such documents? Adobe Acrobat? A web site or blog?
- Is there a preferred length?
In addition, our team has drawn up a list of potential topics. They would appreciate your feedback and comments on whether any of these are of greater interest to you:
1. Response to Intervention (RTI). What is RTI and how is it useful to students and educators?
2. Growth measurement. What are the basic models for measuring growth and how can the results be interpreted?
3. Formative Assessment. What is formative assessment (vs. interim assessment, benchmark testing, classroom testing, etc.)?
4. Comprehensive Assessment Systems. What are comprehensive assessment systems and how can they be useful for school systems?
5. Scaling options for showing growth.
6. Kindergarten readiness and early childhood assessment. What’s appropriate and available for assessing young children?
7. Adaptive Testing. What is adaptive testing and in what situations is it most useful?
8. Assessing ESL students. What are federal requirements for ESL assessment of school-age students?
9. Value-added or “productivity” systems. What are these systems, how are they useful, and what are their limitations?
10. International benchmarking. Describe TIMSS, PERLS, and other international benchmarking programs. How are these useful and what are their limitations?
11. Common Core Standards. What are the common core state standards and the common core college readiness standards, and how are they designed to fit together?
12. Automated scoring of constructed response items. How do these systems work? What is the state of the art?
13. What are reliability and validity, and why are they important in measurement?
14. Why is test security important in many assessment situations?
We look forward to your comments…
Entry filed under: Assessment and Accountability, Data Analytics, Research and Measurement. Tags: assessment, educational measurement, white papers.
1.
Jeff Barker | September 30, 2010 at 4:20 pm
A few suggestions and reminders:
Know your aduience and understand their disposition/interests
Determine the length based onh your audience. Get to the point
Use language appropriate for your audience. Many papers easily become too technical for the audience.
Make certain the outline is strong/detailed. Too many times the outline does not provide enough information
Be objective. I need to know the pros and cons, positives and negatives – not one side
2.
liz frischhertz | October 1, 2010 at 12:03 am
Limited time to read and bombarded with great research. I agree with Jeff- keep it short, use graphics.
Two topics in Louisiana:
-value added decisions about teachers and programs
-common core standards
Both of these will require a change in our benchmark assessments, Would like tp see research that reinforces item banks are reliable and valid. Clear explanations of these terms that enable teachers and district staff to create and/or critique tests. ,
3.
Ron Rode | October 26, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Our board in San Diego is very interested in measuring individual student growth; we have limited assessments that lend themselves to this type of measurement. We are also being pressed to measure critical thinking and creativity…thus, more information on automated scoring of constructed response items would be helpful.
There is also interest in value-added models but there are reservations about how, and by how much, such information should contribute to teacher evaluations. Recent, objective information would be helpful as the field weighs how to use such models.