Todd takes an achievement test that yields standard scores. The mean of the test scores is 200, and ...

Answer to #1

C

Answer to #2

D

Answer to #3

A

Answer to #4

C

Answer to #5

An assessment instrument has cultural bias if any of its items either offend or unfairly penalize some students on the basis of their ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. Examples of strategies that can help minimize cultural bias are the following (the response should include three of them or other equally justifiable strategies):
 Scrutinize assessment instruments carefully for tasks that students might find offensive because of their ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status.
 Scrutinize assessment instruments carefully for tasks that students might have difficulty answering because of their ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status.
 If students have only limited proficiency in English (as might be the case for recent immigrants), minimize your dependence on language to assess achievement in subject areas other than language arts.
 Teach students test-taking strategies.
 Encourage students to ask questions if they are unfamiliar with the content or procedures required for assessment tasks.

Answer to #6

D

Answer to #7

A

Answer to #8

The response should include at least four guidelines consistent with the textbook's discussion of grading in Chapter 10. Examples of appropriate guidelines are these:
 Base grades on achievement.
 Base grades on hard data (e.g., on the results of formal assessments).
 Base grades on assessment instruments that are reliable and standardized and that have content validity for your instructional objectives.
 Base grades on a large number of assessments.
 Share grading criteria with students.
 Keep students continually apprised of their progress.
 Accompany grades with descriptions of what the grades reflect.
 Accompany grades with additional qualitative information about students' performance.
 Assign criterion-referenced grades unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.
 Supplement grades with portfolios that reflect students' improvement or the complexity of their achievement.

Answer to #9

Following are general points that a response might include:
 Reliability: For paper-pencil assessment, scorer reliability depends on the extent to which items are objectively scorable. Performance assessments often have low scorer reliability (e.g., different teachers may rate the same performance quite differently; students' performance on complex tasks can be inconsistent across time, especially if an assessment taps only a small sample of behavior).
 Standardization: Generally speaking, paper-pencil assessments are easily standardized. Some performance assessments (e.g., a typing test) are easily standardized, but others (e.g., an art project) are not.
 Validity: Content validity is of primary concern when assessing classroom achievement. Paper-pencil test items that require only short responses (e.g., multiple-choice items, short-answer questions) allow wider sampling of the content domain; in this sense, they provide greater content validity. Yet tasks requiring complex responses (e.g., essays, performance tasks) may have greater content validity if they more closely match instructional goals and objectives.
 Practicality: Paper-pencil assessment is typically more practical than performance assessment; for instance, it usually requires no equipment other than paper and writing implements, and teachers can easily assess the knowledge and skills of all of their students at the same time. Some paper-pencil assessments have the additional advantage of being relatively quick and easy to score.

Answer to #10

Examples of assessment practices that facilitate learning are these (the response should include three of these or equally justifiable strategies):
 Give a pretest to determine an appropriate place to begin instruction and/or identify students' current misconceptions about the topic of a lesson.
 Use tasks that assess meaningful learning rather than rote learning.
 Focus assessment on important objectives rather than trivial details.
 Use tasks that require complex cognitive processes.
 Use authentic assessment to promote connections between classroom subject matter and real-world contexts.
 Use assessment results to determine which content areas need additional coverage and which student behaviors need additional practice.
 Involve students in the assessment process (e.g., solicit their input about appropriate scoring criteria) in order to promote self-regulation.
 Provide concrete feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of students' performance.

Answer to #11

In four paragraphs, the student should accurately describe the concepts of reliability, standardization, validity, and practicality, providing definitions along these lines:
 Reliability: Extent to which an instrument yields consistent results
 Standardization: Extent to which an instrument involves similar content and format and is administered and scored in the same way for everyone
 Validity: Extent to which an instrument actually assesses what it is being used to assess
 Practicality: Extent to which assessment instruments and procedures are inexpensive and relatively easy to use and take only a reasonable amount of time to administer and score
Each paragraph should include both an example and a counterexample of the characteristic being described. To illustrate, a teacher who specifies the scoring criteria for an essay in specific, concrete terms is enhancing reliability. In contrast, a teacher who grades some essays while fresh and alert in the morning but grades other essays while tired and groggy at night is reducing reliability.