Approaching Standards for Mathematics Assessment. ERIC/CSMEE Digest

ERIC Educational Reports, Jul 01, 1993 by Patricia A. Brosnan, Martin D. Hartog

9. Students, parents, and teachers must be convinced that competence as demonstrated on the assessments will lead to real opportunity for further education and jobs with advancement prospects (The National Center on Education and the Economy, 1991, pp. 9-10).

Standards for Teacher Competence in Educational Assessment of Students were concurrently developed by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), and the National Education Association (NEA) (1990) requiring that:

1. Teachers should be skilled in CHOOSING assessment methods appropriate for instructional decision.

2. Teachers should be skilled in DEVELOPING assessment methods appropriate for instructional decisions.

3. Teachers should be skilled in ADMINISTERING, SCORING, and INTERPRETING the results of both externally-produced and teacher-produced assessment methods.

4. Teachers should be skilled in USING assessment results when making decisions about individual students, planning teaching, developing curriculum, and school improvement.

5. Teachers should be skilled in DEVELOPING valid pupil grading procedures which use pupil assessments.

6. Teachers should be skilled in COMMUNICATING assessment results to students, parents, other lay audiences, and other educators.

7. Teachers should be skilled in RECOGNIZING unethical, illegal, and otherwise inappropriate assessment methods and use of assessment information. (pp. 3-5)

With these teacher competence standards and the proposed assessment standards on the horizon, the question must be raised, "Will alternative assessment methods really make a difference?"WHAT DO EARLY RESEARCH RESULTS SUGGEST ABOUT ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT?Large scale assessment programs are beginning to assign assessment tasks in which groups of students work collaboratively to solve problems or complete projects. Research results show that, in the group setting, performance is much better than in the individual setting. While the data provide important insights into students' mathematics skills and their behavior in cooperative groups, little is known about the validity of data from group assessment for making inferences about the competence of individual students (Webb, 1992).

The effects of portfolio assessment on mathematics students' attitudes about grades, their awareness of their mathematical strengths and weaknesses, and their ability to set reasonable goals were studied . Results suggest that portfolio assessment might help students see their strengths and weaknesses so that they are more able to link successes and failures to performance. Portfolio assessment might also facilitate goal setting (Owings & Follo, 1992).

Results of innovative assessment indicate that some students performed surprisingly well and were able to explain concepts in detail. If a question was rephrased, students were able to do very well explaining a problem in contrast to drawing a blank on traditional tests. Others did not do as well as expected, demonstrating an inability to explain concepts, and relying on memorized facts and simple computation (Lehman, 1992).