Education Testing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Education Testing - Essay Example Criterion-referenced tests provide useful benchmarks, but do not place them in context with other performers. The main disadvantage of both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced standardized tests is that schools might be tempted to make important educational decisions based solely on information from one or the other. In fact, teachers must use a judicious combination of assessments and take into account unique student differences, to create the best possible instructional plans. Informal assessments offer several advantages. They can be more holistic, easily adjusted for situational and student differences, and occur in a wide variety of contexts. One example of an informal assessment is "walking around" one's classroom. The advantages of this assessment are that it gives teachers a chance to have active meetings with students while their works are in progress. It can also be used easily in conjunction with other assessments, such as conversation records (Cole, 1999, p. 3-4). The disadvantages are that initial discipline problems might increase when you spend too much time with one group and that it may require some adaptation of your personal teaching style. Assessment conversations are an informal assessment that uses dialogue and interaction during teacher-student conferences to monitor student progress and adjust instructio