Assessment and Standards

Links within this page: Inservice Training Test Tips Links Documents Samples Why should you care?

Assessment Committee at DVHS: Mission

The DVHS Assessment Committee seeks to develop curriculum-based methods of helping our students improve scores on all types of assessments.

Inservice Training

We are looking for workshops which would benefit teachers beyond the usual how-to-write-a-rubric workshops we all are subjected to. If you have any ideas, let us know.

Links about Assessment

http://www.wolverinelibrary.com/teacherresources.html
Deer Valley High School library's web site about assessment--includes links to an online database of standards (I highly recommend using standards in a database format.)

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/
State Department of Education's main site for assessment resourcesExit exam resources (CAHSEE)

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/resources.asp
STAR test resources

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/released.asp#cstrel
Released tasks from California assessments

http://www.ncee.org/
National Center on Education and the Economy

http://goldmine.cde.ca.gov/statetests/hsee/hsee.html
California Department of Education High School Exit Exam page. There are links to sample items on this page.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/
California Department of Education Main Page

http://ericae.net/digests/tm9503.htm
A freely distributable guide to writing multiple choice.

http://naio.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/oir/guide.html
A straightforward guide to the writing of multiple choice items.

http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed398238.html
A concise guide to writing multiple choice, freely distributable. Backed up with some research citations.

http://students.berkeley.edu/slc/CalRen/TestsGeneral.html
Test taking tips for students.

Papers and Presentations

Using Performance Assessments in the Physics Classroom
This paper uses physics examples but contains many general tutorial tips about performance assessment.

Writing and Taking Multiple Choice Exams
A guide for teachers. Includes all the standard tricks.

Standards and Assessments
Presentation to AUSD teachers about connecting SAT 9 to standards.

Student Generated Assessments
Hypothesis: students who write test questions will take questions more seriously.

Assessment Samplers

The New Standards Reference Exams offered by Harcourt Brace Educational Measurement provide information about how well students perform against the New Standards Performance Standards, developed by the National Center on Education and the Economy. Jeff was the director of assessment for NCEE and coordinated the development of these exams.

Sample Assessment items from Science

Sample Assessment items from Social Science (courtesy Alison Weihe)

Please note: Most of the documents below are in Adobe Acrobat format. They require the use of the (free) Adobe Acrobat reader. This is used instead of html because the document formatting remains identical to what the printed version lookslike, no matter what your browser settings, and the format is universal to all computer platforms (Windows, DOS, Unix,Sun, and Mac). Requires Adobe Acrobat 3 or higher.

A properly installed, recent copy of Adobe Acrobat reader should install a plug-in within your browser application and these links should work automatically. If you've installed the reader and when you click on the link, you still get a screen of random symbols, right-click (windows) or click and hold (Mac) until the pop-up menu appears and choose "Save link As..." from the list that appears. Choose Save Link as Source, and name the file something that ends in .pdf if it doesn't happen automatically. Then start Acrobat reader, and choose Open from the File menu. You should then be able to open the file.

Testing Tips

The Assessment Committee and Mr. Bart Cox's video production class has collaborated on a series of short films illustrating test taking tips for standardized or other multiple-choice assessments. A list of these tips appears below. Italicized tips have been made into videos. Each test taking tip is presented as a trick used by writers to lure students into selecting the wrong answer. Therefore, each "trick" must be defeated by a test taking strategy which defends against that trick. Not all tricks are employed on any particular assessment. In this way we avoid specifically preparing for state mandated tests, which is required by law. Preparing for tests in general is allowed. Also, none of the tips dealt specifically with test content, which is also prohibited.

 

Tip	Writing Technique	Test Taking Strategy	Example Item	Best Use
Best Wrong Answer First	Write a m/c question which presents reasonable distractors, and place the one most likely to be selected ahead of the right answer in the list. Since students often stop when they find the right answer, they will not read past this "best" wrong answer.	Read all the choices before making a decision.	Who was the second President of the United States? a. George Washington b. Thomas Jefferson c. John Quincy Adams d. Abraham Lincoln	This tip is best used against teacher-written exams. Standardized exams are often computer-scrambled.
True Statements that Don't Address the Question	Write questions which ask for one thing, but provide answers which answer another question entirely. These answers should be true and based solidly in the question or reading passage.	Make sure your choice answers the question asked by reading the question again after making your selection.	Why did Huckleberry Finn run away from home? a. He liked to swim.. b. His father was abusive. c. He watched the riverboat fire a cannon to try to raise his body from the bottom of the river. d. He was friends with Tom Sawyer.	Any well-written multiple choice exam
Math Problem answers will always appear on your calculator	For any math problem involving two numbers, provide choices which add, subtract, divide, and multiply the two numbers.	Don't rely on your calculator and don't always multiply the numbers or always divide the big number by the small number. Work it out before selecting a choice, and eliminate the wrong answers afterward.	If you make $10.00 for 2 hours of work, what is your hourly rate? a. $10 per hour b. $20 per hour c. $5 per hour d. $8 per hour e. $0.20 per hour	Any mathematical question
Do the easy questions first	Put some hard questions at the beginning of the test.	Do the easy questions first, because all items are worth the same amount. If you run out of time, you could lose points.	This tip is not about an individual question, but rather a collection of questions.	This works well on tests where each item is worth the same, such as most teacher written tests and some standardized tests like the SAT - 9. This doesn't apply to exams where the harder questions are weighted more, such as the CAT-6 and SATs.
Guessing	Tell students whether or not guessing is to their advantage in the test instructions.	If a test does not penalize for wrong answers, you should guess on items you would otherwise leave blank. If there is a penalty (typically -1/4 point for each wrong answer) then you should guess if you can eliminate one or two choices, but not if you cannot eliminate any choices.	This tip is not about an individual question, but rather a collection of questions.	Guessing is almost always effective on questions where two or more choices can be eliminated. If you cannot eliminate any wrong choices, then guessing may penalize you on questions like the AP exams.
No stupid choices	Well written items will always have at least two reasonable choices.	Eliminate stupid choices if you can to increase the likelihood you will select the right answer.	What are Deer Valley's school colors? a. Mauve and Chartreuse b. Orange and Green c. Teale and Black d. Red and Pink	You'll find questions like these on any well written tests. Tests written by non-educators such as certification tests, licensure tests, and so on, are more likely to have questions with stupid choices.
More than one right answer	Use Roman numerals and an extra layer of selection to allow choices involving more than one right answer.	Carefully ignore the letter choices and ask which of the Roman numeral choices are correct. Then match up according to the letters corresponding to your choices.	Which of the following states border California? a. I only b. II and I only c. I , II, and III only d. all of these e. II and III and IV only I. Oregon II.Nevada III. Arizona IV. Utah	Very common on standardized tests.
The longest choice	Try to avoid making the longest choice consistently the correct choice.	Poor question writers often make the right answer, with all its conditions and high accuracy, the longest answer. Pay special attention to answers which are longer than all the others. It may be right---or it may be a trap.	What is Newton's third law? a. Objects in motion will stay in motion. b. F= ma. c. For every action force, there is an equal, opposite, and simultaneous reaction force. The forces do not cancel because they do not act on the same thing.	On poorly written tests, long answers tend to be right answers. On well-written tests, long answers are seldome the right answers (but sometimes they are.)
Exploitation of weakness	Analyze student homework or writing to determine common errors and construct questions based on that.	Pay attention to feedback on homework and test review.	Spell the name of the continent where the south pole is located. a. Arctica b. Antiarcitca c. Antiarctica d. Antarctica e. Aurora	This strategy appears in both teacher written and standardized tests. This is why it is important to pay attention when the teacher goes over the results of an exam before a final exam.
Graph trends	Write a question which involves interpreting graphical data. More sophisticated questions involve the trends on the graph rather than simply reading values. However, many standardized tests involve simply reading values.	Be familiar with all the major types of graphs and how to interpret them: pie charts, line graphs, bar charts, scatterplots, and so on. Make sure you know the question is regarding the value on the graph or the trend of the data.	Pending
Analogies	Write items that draw analogies between two ideas by using the format: A is to B as C is do D. You can leave one of these items out and ask it, and	Ask yourself, what is the relationship of A to B? Then ask, what has a relationship with C like that? The only correct choice has an identical relationship.	Pending

 

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Good Arguments for Taking Standardized Tests Seriously

10. You should take pride in everything you do and perform to the best of your ability.

9. There are going to be two kinds of people in your future: people who brag about purposefully doing poorly on standardized tests, and people who don't need to brag because they did well. Which do you want to be?

8. Any test is good practice for other tests of the same nature.

7. School spirit and a sense of community are enhanced when we all work together toward a common goal.

6. It is possible to learn new things you didn't know in the process of answering questions. In fact, some theories of learning say that the only time you learn new things is when you figure them out for yourself rather than being told them in a lecture; some people learn more during homework and tests than they ever do when sitting passively in a classroom.

5. Employers regularly use standardized tests as a method of screening applicants for high paying jobs. Not only do they look at scores from school tests, they administer their own tests. You are more likely to do well if you have taken such tests seriously. This ranges from driver's licensing exams to industrial certifications to teaching. Tests are just a fact of life.

4. Real estate prices have been shown to be influenced by local standardized test scores. Agents want to know how well the schools prepare students, and the only public measurement they have is standardized test scores. (Made into a video by Mr. Cox's class.)

3. You never know when someone is going to check on your score on any standardized test. The career center reports that colleges and employers ask about SAT-9 scores.

2. The state of California will pay the top 10% of scorers in a school and the top 5% in the state a $1000 scholarship which can be redeemed by the college of your choice upon graduation.

1. Why not?

 

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The Assessment Task Force for DVHS

 

 

 

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