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[Assessment] Standardize: the ritual harpMarie Cora marie.cora at hotspurpartners.comTue Jan 31 13:48:53 EST 2006
Hi Bruce, Thanks for this - and I completely agree with you: for whatever reasons, 'standardized' does seem to equal TABE, CASAS, and BEST within our field. I guess you could say it's a piece of my mission - to convince our field not to think this way or use the term this way any longer. marie cora Assessment Discussion List Moderator -----Original Message----- From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:assessment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Bruce Carmel Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 1:13 PM To: The Assessment Discussion List Subject: Re: [Assessment] Standardize: the ritual harp Hi Marie (and everyone) I hear your point about standardizing assessment tools. Thanks for the posting. When I hear people say "standardized" in this context, it is always "standardized tests." (Except in the posting you just wrote:)) I don't think they mean something such as a standardized system for scoring portfolios. I think "standardized" means TABE, CASAS, etc. in our field. Marie Cora <marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com> wrote: Hi all, Great conversation going here..looking forward to more. Bruce, thanks so much for your posts. I'm not picking on you, I promise: I'm picking on EVERYONE!!! Bruce, you said: "And even if we devote the time to a good tool, we still have to use standardized tests as well to comply with funders." Many of you are moaning now, thinking: "here she goes yet again." - but it's my job: good tools and bad tools are standardized; portfolios are standardized; quizzes can be standardized; TABE is standardized but so is the writing rubric REEP; in theory, any assessment can be standardized. What everyone rails against is the particular selection of assessments that are available to us today - and while those are standardized, that's not what makes them good, bad, or ugly. Standardized tests should be viewed as positive things because their soul mission in life is to attempt a level playing field. As a field, we object to the paucity of choices, not that those choices are standardized. We also object to the use of materials that are out-dated or do not reflect today's needs. We object to the mis-use of a particular assessment. We should object to incorrect use of data and test results. We should object to mis-alignment between curriculum and assessment - which directly speaks to Bruce's (and many many folks') wish that there be an assessment that can serve the purposes of the classroom and program as well as it can serve the purposes of high stakes issues (like funding or career advancement). What we really want are in fact standardized assessments, that's not the issue. The issue is that we don't yet have a thorough selection of tools that meet our complex needs - whether those tools are standardized or not. marie-harp-on-cora Assessment Discussion List Moderator ------------------------------- National Institute for Literacy Assessment mailing list Assessment at nifl.gov To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment _____ Yahoo! <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=38381/%20ylc=X3oDMTEzcGlrdGY5BF9TAzk3MTA3MDc 2BHNlYwNtYWlsdGFncwRzbGsDMWF1dG9z/*http:/autos.yahoo.com/index.html%20> Autos. Looking for a sweet ride? Get pricing, reviews, & more on new and used cars. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/assessment/attachments/20060131/864238d7/attachment.html
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