EFFICIENT ASSESSMENT BASICS
Acknowledgements
By no means do I have all the answers, and I am drawing on a large pool of generous experts whose work has inspired
me throughout my career as an assessment person. I owe my role models a huge debt of gratitude
and hope to pass on what I have learned from them. There is likely to be more wisdom available
than what I have agglomerated here, so please use this material as a
springboard to your own further investigations.
Any inaccuracies or misstatements are, of course, mine.
Introduction
All too often we panic and try to assess everything all
the time. It’s really not necessary, and
especially in this time of budgetary constraints, we can be much more
successful at evaluating our systems and programs if we focus our efforts in a
more conscious fashion.
What are the keys here?
1. First, you
may want to be clear about why you are doing assessment. There may be more than one reason, and these
reasons may lead to apparently controversial arrangements in how assessment is
designed and implemented.
2. What are your
overall outcomes for assessment as a whole?
These macro level outcomes should be as clearly stated as any program or
performance level outcomes.
3. Don’t try to make assessment harder than absolutely
necessary. First we want to achieve simplicity,
proficiency and efficiency. Fancy can come
later.
I. The Context of Assessment
It matters what environment you are in, when deciding
what assessments to perform. For
example, if you have been only measuring your success at getting new students
to enroll, but your legislature is suddenly far more interested in funding
based on graduation rates, you may want to expand your repertoire.
You may also want to evaluate the culture of evidence
and the readiness to use data-driven decision making in your organization. There may be a need to build awareness,
identify thought leaders and early adopters, and encourage public recognition
of using assessment results to support recommendations.
II. Positioning Your Outcomes
When measuring outcomes, you want to be sure you are
capturing the most accurate data possible so you can make good decisions based
on it. One idea you will hear about is
called validity, and this has to do with the accuracy of measurement, or are
you really measuring what you think you are measuring? A related idea is called reliability, and
that has to do with the consistency of your measuring…as in, are you measuring exactly
the same way every time?
It’s worth the extra meeting time to go over your
outcomes and measures carefully to make sure you are gathering the right stuff
for your assessments to be meaningful, not only to the local conditions for
your students as they learn, but also for the larger context of education that
is changing all around us.
III. Achieving Simplicity
You’ve heard people say “Keep it Simple…” when talking
about assessment design. Not only is
this good practice when you are new at something, it is also easier to be
convincing to outside reviewers when you present your results. Achieving simplicity is harder than it looks,
oddly. You want the smallest reasonable
set of measures that fully investigate and document the outcomes you have set
for yourselves (also called parsimonious modeling).
IV. Deciding When to Get Fancy
When the terror of being new at assessment gives way to
boredom with the <ho hum> same
old measures, then it’s time to think about getting more sophisticated at what
you are doing to measure success and drive improvement.
V. Where to Find More Information
Here are a few good places to start finding out more
about assessment:
There are many more…happy hunting!
