Assessment+Purpose

=The Purposes of the Assessment=

Different types of assessment strategies are used for different purposes; your purposes should determine how you measure knowledge and skills.

Measuring Individual Student Learning
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Assessments designed to measure student learning in a course or program often become an integral component of the curriculum. Assessments with this purpose can be administered on-demand: they can be given often and graded quickly, and performance can be assessed cumulatively over longer periods of time.

Many teachers use assessments to measure individual student learning and progress. Some traditional strategies for this purpose include pop quizzes, end-of-chapter exams, and in-class essay exams. Alternative forms include portfolios, oral presentations, and senior projects. Assessments with this purpose can provide a teacher with insight into students' academic and technical progress and, if used over time, an impression of students' cognitive development as well. Assessments designed to measure student learning can also provide teachers with information about which instructional approaches work best, and where changes need to be made or additional attention focused.

Certification of Individual Students
An assessment used to certify student mastery of occupationally oriented material provides an effective means of signaling to employers that a student has a particular set of skills and knowledge. Since students generally seek employment (or a higher-level job) in an occupational area after being certified, employers frequently give input into the design and implementation of the system. In a true employee certification system, employers require certification for hiring and career advancement. In some industries, such as health, students cannot apply for particular jobs without the certification.

Assessments used to certify students may document general abilities or accumulated knowledge (e.g., tests for college admission) or specific ones (e.g., tests for professional licensing). Individuals who pass tests of specific, job-oriented skills often receive a certificate that can be used statewide, or even nationally.

Program Performance Information
Assessment is also used to provide information on the quality of the programs, schools, and districts that are providing education and training. This information may be used for monitoring progress in making program improvements, maintaining quality, making comparisons across different programs, or holding administrators of programs accountable. Trend data for programs, schools, or districts can also be used to monitor the performance of these entities over time.

Assessments used to provide program performance information often aggregate scores from individual performances to describe the achievement of particular groups (e.g., a graduating class or a whole school, or males and females separately). Assessments with this purpose are often administered infrequently, for example, annually or even less often.