Assessment of Individual Differences in General Education and Special Education

Formal Assessment: Preplanned test that measures the amount of information students retain from what was previously taught. Examples of formal assessments are written tests or projects . Then the data would be mathematically calculated to gage the student’s knowledge.

Informal Assessment: Observation based test that allows the teacher to identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses. Examples of informal assessments are journaling and oral presentations.

Formative Assessment: Low stakes assessment that monitors student learning to identify the student’s strengths and weaknesses that can then be addressed.

Examples of formative assessments are a research proposal or concept map of the lesson.

Summative Assessment: High stakes assessment that evaluate student learning and then compare it against a given standard. Examples of a summative assessment include a midterm or final project.

Ecological Assessment: The analysis of an individual's learning environment and his/her interactions within and across these settings.

Pre-Assessment: A test students can take before a new unit to find out what the students need more instruction on and what they may already know.

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Self Assessment: occurs when learners assess their own performance. With practice, they learn to: objectively reflect on and critically evaluate their own progress and skill development. identify gaps in their understanding and capabilities.

Norm vs. Criterion –referenced: Norm-referenced refers to standardized tests that are designed to compare and rank test takers in relation to one another. Criterion-referenced tests compare a person's knowledge or skills against a predetermined standard, learning goal, performance level, or other criterion.

Developmental Domains: In childhood development the “domains” of a child’s physical and mental abilities grow through Cognitive Development, Language Development, Social Development, and Physical Development

DPIE: Definition of State Board of Education Policy

Functional Behavior Assessment: A process that identifies specific target behavior, the purpose of the behavior, and what factors maintain the behavior that is interfering with the student's educational progress.

Behavior Intervention Plan: A plan that's designed to teach and reward positive behaviors. This can help prevent or stop problem behaviors in school.

Sociogram: A visual depiction of the relationships among a specific group. It can help teachers identify issues, social groups within the classroom, make changes in group structures.

Anecdotal Records, Running Records- Anecdotal notes are used to record specific observations of individual student behaviors, skills and attitudes as they relate to the outcomes in the program of studies. Such notes provide cumulative information on student learning and direction for further instruction. Running record is a method of assessing reading that can be done quickly and frequently. It is an individually conducted formative assessment, which is ongoing and curriculum based.

Observation: structured /unstructured- Structured observation occurs when data is collected systematically to describe behaviors accurately and reliably. Unstructured observation encourages a creative attitude to collecting information.

Antecedent, Setting Events, Latency- Antecedent is the event or activity that immediately precedes a problem behavior. Setting Events are the events that momentarily change the value of reinforcers and punishers in a student's life. The occurrence of a setting event can explain why a request to complete a task results in problem behavior on one day but not on the next. Latency recording measures the amount of time that lapses between an antecedent (e.g., teacher's directive) and when the student begins to perform a specified behavior.

Event Recording Checklist: Event recording is a process for documenting the number of times a behavior occurs. An observer using event recording makes a tally mark or documents in some way each time a student engages in a target behavior. The observer also records the time in which the behavior is being observed.

Frequency Checklist: Collects information about how often or in what quantity something. For example, high frequency words or phrases used in the classroom.

Likert Scale: A popular format of questionnaire that is used in the field of special education.

Curriculum Alignment: An academic program that is well organized, purposefully designed to facilitate learning, free of academic gaps and needless repetitions, and aligned across lessons, courses, subject areas, and grade levels.

Goal vs. Objectives: Overt vs. Covert ABCD- An overt response is one which can be seen or heard by others. A covert response is one which cannot be seen by other people.

Learning outcomes vs Learning Activities- Learning objectives describe the goal of the learning program and define what competencies the learners must achieve after completing the program. Learning activities are the resources that help in achieving the learning objectives of an eLearning program.

Pre-Teaching and Backward Shaping: Pre-teaching is the teaching of the language learners need before an activity. When teaching life skills to children with special needs, it refers to breaking down the steps of a task and teaching them in reverse order.

Bloom’s Taxonomy: HOTS Cognitive, Affective- Bloom’s Taxonomy is a continuum of increasing cognitive complexity from remembering to creating. High Order Thinking is the idea is that some types of learning require more cognitive processing than others, but also have more generalized benefits. Affective education is concerned with the beliefs, feelings and attitudes of students.

Multiple Intelligence: 8 intelligences- The theory that eight different intelligences account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. They are: Linguistic intelligence, Logical-mathematical intelligence, Spatial intelligence, Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence, Musical intelligence, Interpersonal intelligence, Intrapersonal intelligence, Naturalist intelligence.

Holistic vs. Analytic Rubrics: Kolistic scoring gives students a single, overall assessment score for the paper as a whole. Analytic scoring provides students with at least a rating score for each criterion, though often the rubric for analytic scoring offers teachers enough room to provide some feedback on each criterion.

Performance Assessment: Useful for assessing students’ achievement of complex learning standard, assessing their ability to apply concepts they learned to solve problems, and assessing skills.

Authentic Assessment: Requires application of what students have learned to a new situation, and that demands judgment to determine what information and skills are relevant and how they should be used.

Alternative Assessment: Determine what students can and cannot do, in contrast to what they do or do not know. An alternative assessment measures applied proficiency more than it measures knowledge. Examples include: project work, and other activities requiring some type of rubric.

Remediation, Accommodation, Modification: Remediation is working on the root problem that is causing the child to need accommodations and modifications in the first place. Accommodations can help kids learn the same material and meet the same expectations as their classmates. For example, if a student has reading issues, for example, she might listen to an audio recording of a text. Kids who are far behind their peers may need changes, or modifications, to the curriculum. For example, a student could be assigned shorter or easier reading assignments. Kids who receive modifications are not expected to learn the same material as their classmates.

Curriculum-Based Measurement: A method teachers use to find out how students are progressing in basic academic areas such as math, reading, writing, and spelling.

Response to Intervention: 3 tiers- Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tier approach to the early identification and support of students with learning and behavior needs. Tier 1: High-Quality Classroom Instruction, Screening, and Group Interventions. Tier 2: Targeted Interventions. Tier 3: Intensive Interventions and Comprehensive Evaluation.

Validity: content, criterion, construct- Assessment validity is most significant concept in assessment, assessment validity reflects the defensibility of the score-based inference made on the basis of an educational assessment procedure. Content-related validity

Evidence is the extent to which the content of the test matches the instructional objectives. Criterion validity demonstrates the degree of accuracy of a test by comparing it with another test, measure or procedure which has been demonstrated to be valid. Construct validity is the extent to which an assessment corresponds to other variables, as predicted by some rationale or theory. Construct-related evidence of validity for educational tests is usually gathered through a series of studies.

Reliability: test/restest, inter-rater, Internal- Reliability is the degree to which an assessment tool produces stable and consistent results. Test-retest reliability is a measure of reliability obtained by administering the same test twice over a period of time to a group of individuals. The scores from Time 1 and Time 2 can then be correlated in order to evaluate the test for stability over time. Inter-rater reliability is a measure of reliability used to assess the degree to which different judges or raters agree in their assessment decisions. Inter-rater reliability is useful because human observers will not necessarily interpret answers the same way; raters may disagree as to how well certain responses or material demonstrate knowledge of the construct or skill being assessed. Internal consistency reliability is a measure of reliability used to evaluate the degree to which different test items that probe the same construct produce similar results.

Dynamic Assessment: A method of conducting a language assessment that seeks to identify the skills that an individual child possesses as well as their learning potential. The dynamic assessment procedure emphasizes the learning process and accounts for the amount and nature of examiner investment. It is highly interactive and process-oriented.

Select Response vs Construct Response- Select Response is a type of question that includes multiple choice or matching, and tests a broad range of the taught curriculum. Constructed Response is a type of question that includes short answer and essay questions that allow students to provide in-depth knowledge of a given topic.

Test Blueprint, Test Constraints: A test blueprint is the plan that you create and use when writing a test. When you write a test for your students, the test blueprint insures that every instructional objective is addressed by the test and conversely that every question on the test addresses an instructional objective. Test constraints include the limited time allotted to the given assessment for the student.

Item, Stem, Distractors, Keyed Response- In the construction of multiple choice tests, a multiple choice item consists of a problem, known as the stem, and a list of suggested solutions, known as alternatives. The alternatives consist of one correct or best alternative, which is the answer, and incorrect or inferior alternatives, known as distractors.

Standardized Tests: Adequate Yearly Progress- A measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act, that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized tests.

Performance Level: Performance-Level Descriptors provide teachers, parents, and students more information about the skills and knowledge a student demonstrates on state assessments in each performance level. PLDs are linked to state-adopted content standards and are used as guides by standard-setting committees as they make recommendations for the scores needed to achieve performance levels on statewide assessments.

Central Tendency: Mean Median Mode- Measures of Central Tendency provide a summary measure that attempts to describe a whole set of data with a single value that represents the middle or center of its distribution. The mean of a data set is also known as the average value. It is calculated by dividing the sum of all values in a data set by the number of values. The median of a data set is the value that is at the middle of a data set arranged from smallest to largest. The mode is the most common observation of a data set, or the value in the data set that occurs most frequently.

Percentile Rank, Stanine, Grade Equivalent- Percentile Rank are scores students receive on standardized tests to report to parents and understand how that student performs. Stanine is a method of scaling test scores on a nine-point standard scale with a mean of five and a standard deviation of two. Grade equivalent is A grade equivalent score is described as both a growth score and a status score.

Standard Deviation, Frequency Distribution: Standard Deviation is a measurement of variability used in statistics, which shows how much variation there is from the average. Frequency Distribution indicates the number of students who received various scores on an exam.

Bell Curve: Positively/Negatively skewed- Method of assigning grades designed that yields a desired distribution of grades among the students in a class. It assigns grades according to the frequency distribution, which is based on student’s performance compared to their classmates’. When the Bell Curve is positively skewed, it leans right-ward. When the Bell Curve is negatively skewed, it leans left-ward.