Jenny Holt 14.2 QTC

  

(14.2) Consider norm referenced assessment and criterion referenced assessment. Are there advantages to both? Are there disadvantages?

With criterion-referenced assessments, it seems that students are given the opportunity to learn more based on their needs. Because criterion-referenced assessments focus more on the level of mastery for specific skills within a subject, teachers are able to get more information on the needs of the student. With more specific information about their individual needs, teachers can then begin to work with the student to establish goals. Also, by measuring a student’s performance against the criteria, as opposed to by the performance of other students, the information that you receive from their grades should be more telling and useful for classroom teachers. While norm referenced assessments may give you a number that lets you, as the teacher, know that your students struggled in Math in comparison to other students within the state taking the same test, it does not tell you specifically where their needs lie—or what might need to be retaught. In other words, I feel that even though a norm-referenced assessment may tell you that a student is below grade level it doesn’t tell you what you really need to know—like what specific skills the student has (how many words he/she can read, can he/she subtract two digit numbers, etc.) As a teacher, I would be more interested in what the child can do so that I could begin teaching them at their proper skill level, rather than how they did compared to other students. 

As a child, I remember getting back my TCAP scores. There were lots of confusing graphs and percentages, often hard to understand and interpret. I can remember some kids opening them up and immediately covering up their scores with a book on their desk, not wanting to their peers to see how they performed. I think a lot of kids were labeled based off of these scores growing up and the constant comparison can really effect how you feel about yourself and your abilities. I’m sure we’ve all been compared to someone else in our lives at some point….i.e. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” It doesn’t feel good.

In our own classrooms I think we just need to think about what we really want to gain from the assessments that we give. Obviously, we want them to be reliable, so we need to integrate many different types of assessments. Regardless of how we feel about norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessments, we may not always have a choice about what we administer to our students. We can, however, integrate different types of assessments into what we do throughout the year so that we get more opportunities to identify specific skills that may need more attention. That said, this is only my current opinion. I feel a little funny even having an opinion without any real world experience in the classroom as a teacher. I may feel completely different a year into my teaching career. Regardless, I think it is important that we all explore our own perceptions of assessment, as they may influence how we manage our classrooms in the future.