She was tall and had the longest, thinnest legs I’ve ever seen. She was like a giraffe, a giraffe with a pixie cut, anyway. Her delicate fingers held her cell phone as she snapped photos. She walked in whispers, in waves. And then in one fell swoop, she saw my books.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
“Oh,” she said. I could smell the distaste as the word dropped from her lips and hung there. “These, all of these must go,” she said, and one of her arms gestured, as if I could use a magic wand to POOF them away.
Giraffe lady’s business card was shiny, waxy, and I folded it over and over upon itself. Her leopard-print kitten heels clicked along our scuffed up wood floors. They sneered at my New Balance tennis shoes from Costco.
I couldn’t keep up with her. She wanted our life put into boxes, compartmentalized, hidden, camouflaged. Like only the house existed, not the people inside of it. No evidence. Clear the crime scene, no human beings have deigned to breathe within the confines of these walls! No children or adults have sullied this place, look how pristine it is!
Giraffe lady emailed me a to-do list of eleventy billion things that needed attention before proceeding.
I heaved myself up and began. What else was there to do?
In 2023, I conquered 7 classes (21 credits) in my master’s program at Pitt State. I was deathly afraid of returning to school after a hiatus of (ahem, cough, throat clearing) 23 years. As it turns out, a virtual program kicks your ass because you have to essentially teach yourself. It’s all about focus, self discipline, and persistence.
I’m grateful to my professors for showing me grace so I could cobble together a trip to Atlanta in February 2023 to donate a kidney. Donating my kidney was something I felt compelled to do for several reasons. There’s nothing better than giving the gift of life.
This sign from my run today:
Seen on my run today. Might be my new mantra.
There are hills everywhere. I climb them. Sometimes I get stuck. Quite a few hills are looming in the distance, and several prevent me from seeing all that lies ahead. I just know I need to keep climbing.
4. The next hill for me is student teaching. I’m lucky to be matched with a fabulous fourth grade teacher. Lots of my in-person learning begins tomorrow, and I’m equal parts excited and nervous.
5. Moving my body calms my anxious brain. Today I left the house with some trash bags and picked up litter along Lackman Road. Keeping busy in lots of little ways also quiets the voices in my head.
6. Meet Flounder, our newest family member:
Flounder prefers our humble abode to the Petsmart he was residing in.
7. Saturday Scrabble. I lost, but whatever. I don’t do resolutions, but I will do more Scrabble.
8. Sometimes you need ice cream for dinner. Trust me on this one. It’s best when it involves both peanut butter and chocolate.
9. Everything in my feed right now revolves around (a) various ways to remove excess facial hair, (b) whole-body deodorant (see also: is it just me, or is this mainly marketed to women and WHY?!), and (c) pelvic floor issues. Isn’t it fun being a woman?
I’m really excited and proud to share that I have a post being featured on the National Kidney Registry’s website about my experience as a living kidney donor. Please pop over there when you have time. I’d love it if you helped spread the word about how easy it can be to donate an organ. CLICK HEREto read my Top Ten Things to Know About Being a Living Kidney Donor!
Figure 18.1 from p. 412: Where to look to locate an assessment tool (Brookhart & Nitko)
Chapter 18 in Educational Assessment of Students focuses on finding published assessments to suit a variety of teachers’ needs. Maybe you have a student who seems to be struggling and you want to rule out dyslexia. Perhaps you’d like to peruse state assessment options for your class, or even your district. This chapter outlines several reputable resources and routes to travel for your search. Here’s the bottom line: teachers don’t need to work hard to find published assessments because there are plenty out there. Brookhart and Nitko have shared their reliable road map, so let’s go!
Before we get started, here’s a short list of terms you may want to keep in mind:
Tests in Print (TIP)is a test resource brimming with 4,000 listings, and there are ten volumes so far. Its five indexes allow you to search via test name, category, author, type of scoring, or even acronym. Pruebas Publicados enEspañol is the new Spanish version of TIP, but please be aware that some of its tests are only in Spanish and some are published in English, but have a Spanish version as well.
Textbooksabout testing also commonly include tests! The first place you should look is in the index. But it’s important to remember that they only have a little bit of room, and the select few included are likely just convenient for some reason; they are not necessarily high-quality material.
Test publishers’ catalogs might be the smartest way to go about locating tests and relevant details. These catalogs also include other specifics you’ll need to know, like costs, scoring services, and even test manuals. You should check with your school’s testing office (or a nearby college’s testing office), which is generally a hub for items like this.
Locating Published Tests Online
The Buros Institute of Mental Measurements allows you to sift through over 4,000 tests, along with multiple reviews of each. Many of its tests are also available in Spanish. Buros is “the world’s premier test review center,” and is most revered for its psychological and educational testing. “The Oscar K. Buros Library of Mental Measurements houses the largest collection of commercially available tests in the world“(Buros, n.d.).
The ETS Test Collectionis yet another resource to consult for all of your assessment needs. The ETS Test Collection houses over 20,000 tests and associated products. Not all of these tests are published; some are out of print, and others may be purchased and downloaded. Simply use the “Find a Test” tab on the site and search by title, author, or type of test.
If none of the above suggestions work out, you can always try a general internet search using the test title, author’s name, or topic. Brookhart and Nitko suggest using eric.ed.gov before resorting to Google, and using PsychINFO from your library if possible (p.414).
Locating Published Tests Through Personal Contacts
There are certain large organizations and agencies that may be able to assist you or answer your questions via their 1 (800) numbers; several of these are listed in this part of the chapter and below. Occasionally someone affiliated with one of these companies might be able to guide you by connecting you with someone knowledgeable near you:
American Educational Research Association
Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling
International Reading Association (IRA)
National Association of Test Directors (NATD)
National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)
National Center on Educational Outcomes
West Ed
Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (MCREL)
American College Testing Program
Educational Testing Service
National Center for Fair and Open Testing (Brookhart and Nitko, p.414)
Locating Evaluations of Published Tests
If you read my previous post about professional responsibilities, then you already know teachers cannot use someone else’s test without first reviewing it for accuracy and making any necessary edits or corrections. The first portion of this chapter focuses on finding assessments, but this next part centers on finding professional reviews of the assessments you’ve located– because doing your “homework” is one of your primary duties as a teacher.
The Mental Measurements Yearbooks (MMYs) are a series of test bibliographies associated with the Buros Institute, mentioned previously in this post. These consist of hundreds of test reviews, and every single test entry has five distinct parts:
The description section – title, grade level, author’s/publisher’s information
The development section – how refined the test is
The technical section – the test’s reliability and validity (see my previous post)
The commentary section – comprehensive opinion of the test
The summary section – reviewer’s sentiments (Brookhart & Nitko, p. 416)
Professional Journals
The following is a list of journals that share test reviews in reading, math, child development, or learning disabilities:
Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology
Journal of Learning Disabilities
Journal of Personality Assessment
Journal of School Psychology
Journal of Special Education
Psychological Reports
Psychology in the Schools
Reading Teacher (Brookhart and Nitko, p.416)
DO NOT FORGET that there are also still plenty of unpublished tests from a variety of sources. You can check the ETS Test Collection, The Directory of Unpublished Experimental Mental Measures, and Ovid Technologies to search for those. Keep in mind that you might finally find a test you’ve spent months searching for, only to learn that its purchase may be restricted. You may have to jump through some serious hoops to get your hot little hands on something in particular, depending on the publisher’s guidelines. Consequently, Brookhart and Nitko recommend wasting no time when you know there’s a very specific test you need.
Ultimately, teachers don’t need to work hard to find published assessments; they are available in many different places. In fact, it may be more difficult for teachers to find unpublished assessments. Start with the resources mentioned here in this post and you will soon have everything you need at your fingertips.
Psssssst….if you’d like to read another chapter summary, CLICK HERE!
Hi there! I’m here to share some tidbits from Educational Assessment of Students, which you can purchase via the Pitt State Bookstore here, or via Pearson here.Brookhart and Nitko do wonderful work explaining everything we need to know in order to become teachers. Chapter Four, Reliability of Assessment Results, is summarized below. For those of you at home wondering, “Just how reliable are test results?” Let’s dive in.
Here are some important terms from this chapter so you can prepare yourself:
This entire chapter is devoted to reliability, so before we get going, we need to be sure we understand what that is. Reliability is “the degree to which students’ results remain consistent over replications of an assessment procedure” (Brookhart and Nitko, p. 67). To be honest, I struggled with this chapter, so I started Googling a bit. This video helped me better grasp the concept of reliability, especially as it pertains to validity. Maybe it will help you, too? I initially thought they were the same thing. Though they are related, they are not interchangeable:
Validity, on the other hand, “relates to the confidence we have in interpreting students’ assessment results and in using them to make decisions” (Brookhart & Nitko, p.67). I continued to consult Google because my brain kept scrambling the two ideas. The more I read, the more it seemed that reliability is related to consistency, while validity is associated with accuracy. If we go a step further, measurement error is about the inconsistencies in assessment results.
According to Brookhart and Nitko, there are several potential explanations for inconsistencies in test outcomes. Some may be related to the actual content of the assessment, while others could be due to the occasion on which the test was given. Can’t we all empathize with someone who’s had a No Good, Very Bad Day? Students feel the impact of things like a headache, a fight with a friend, or even an upset stomach; these occasions can lead to an unusual performance on a test, thereby creating inconsistency.
The authors go on to describe reliability concerns with various types of assessments and how to address them. For example, they say about objective assessments, “Tests should have enough items that the consistency can show itself” (Brookhart & Nitko, p.70). Essay or project formats, on the other hand, will require rubrics and another set of eyes if/when possible. More than likely, there is just one person grading, so teachers should avoid looking at students’ names and grade one item at a time. This will promote solid and accurate scores. When a student has been out sick, teachers should either use a separate test for makeup work or make sure other students keep the test’s contents under wraps.
The number of items or questions is also critical for the reliability of oral questions and observations. In order to be certain our students have honed a new skill, we should come up with several questions about that skill. According to Brookhart and Nitko, it’s also necessary to provide extra time for pupils to respond to items: “Oral or observed performance should indicate achievement and not lack of time” (p.71). For reliability with self-assessments, teachers should cultivate a class culture that is warm and welcoming, a place where students feel secure enough to share their errors and be vulnerable about weaknesses.
The next part of this chapter addresses several types of reliability coefficients. These reliability coefficients all center around the issues of time, content, and raters (teachers/judges). These are all factors to be considered when teachers need to navigate their assessment results. Scores may be impacted by the day they’re given, and it’s important to determine whether they are consistent over time. There’s also the matter of content; are scores considered consistent if two relatively similar test forms are used? Lastly, what happens to test scores if different teachers are grading them? Are they consistent/equivalent, or not?
Later we learn about the standard error of measurement, or SEM, which is estimated by using an equation rather than testing students over and over again. The SEM estimates the number of mistakes and refers to the performance range where a student’s true score lies. However, Brookhart and Nitko caution readers about using SEM to determine the difference between two students’ scores. Interestingly, there is a possibility of overinterpreting OR underinterpreting score differences, along with the “do-nothing pattern”(Brookhart and Nitko, p.81). To play it safe, the authors suggest simply comparing the data from one test with other information on hand, like classroom performance.
This chapter concludes with nine tips to help teachers enhance the reliability of their test results (Brookhart & Nitko, p.84):
Add questions to the assessment
Expand the scope of the test
Increase objectivity; use a rubric
Have multiple teachers grade; average the results
Combine results from multiple assessments
Give students enough time
Teach students to do their best
Match the assessment level with students’ levels
Differentiate among students
This chapter presents reliability as a critical aspect of assessment results. Remember that reliability and validity are not one and the same! In order to use assessment results appropriately, teachers must first be able to determine how reliable they are. This post gives a brief synopsis of things educators must keep in mind when they make decisions for their students.
I’m enrolled in a class this semester that covers everything you ever wanted to know about assessments. Our class text, Educational Assessment of Students, may be purchased via the Pitt State Bookstore here, or on Amazon here. Thus far, I’ve found that Brookhart and Nitko do an excellent job honing in on what students need to know on their journey to becoming teachers. Chapter Five, Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Behavior, and Legal Requirements, is no exception. I was blissfully unaware that teachers focus on SIX categories of responsibility. For those of you who don’t have time to read all about these, you’re in luck! I’m here to provide you with the CliffsNotes version.
First, here’s a list of a few key terms/phrases you may want to remember and familiarize yourself with:
This chapter’s discussion is based on the National Council on Measurement in Education’s (NCME) Code of Professional Responsibilities in Educational Measurement (CPR). Before I can tell you how teachers focus on six categories of responsibility, there are some other things you need to know. For example, according to Brookhart and Nitko and CPR, the fundamental rules of professional behavior mandate that teachers:
support the safety, health, and wellbeing of all students;
be conscious of and in compliance with state and federal laws pertaining to professional activities;
cultivate and enhance their professional proficiency in educational assessment;
provide assessment services only in areas of their expertise;
promote the understanding of solid assessment practices;
uphold the highest standards of conduct and promote professionally responsible conduct with educational institutions and other departments;
behave in a professional manner and with honesty, integrity, and impartiality (Brookhart & Nitko, p.87-88; NCME, 1995, p.2).
This chapter explains that teachers focus on six categories of responsibility regarding assessment-related topics and gives examples of each. Below is a list of these explicit categories along with my brief summary of their nuts and bolts:
Teachers are responsible for creating high-quality assessments. Educators must plan, write, and execute assessments, which in turn must generate valid and reliable data. It should go without saying that assessments “should be free of gender, ethnic, race, social class, and religious bias and stereotypes.” (Brookhart & Nitko, p. 89) Moreover, assessments must include modifications and accommodations for students who have an IEP or a 504. Unsure about the difference between the two? Watch this video. Educators can use a handful of different kinds of assessments on the same learning objectives in order to generate more valid results. Brookhart and Nitko share specific insights and suggestions for developing appropriate assessments in chapters 12 and 13 of this book. Ultimately, teachers need to create and use high-quality assessments in order to establish a sound database of reliable data on student achievement.
Teachers are responsible for selecting appropriate assessments. There will be times when teachers use content created by others. Such assessments must also be high-quality material; just because something is published or on a fancy-looking website doesn’t necessarily mean its content is correct or that it is acceptable as-is. Educators must do their own homework and due diligence by editing or correcting any errors before putting someone else’s product into the rotation. In addition, Brookhart and Nitko recommend frequent reading of Education Week to see how other states and/or districts are addressing assessments. Essentially, teachers should be using solid, tried-and-true tests 24/7, and take extra care when using those someone else has written.
Teachers are responsible for administering assessments fairly. Teachers must consider the five types of accommodations: presentation, equipment/material, response, timing/scheduling, and setting. Consulting individual students’ IEPs should shed some light on how to appropriately administer assessments to students with a wide range of disabilities. It’s also important for teachers to speak directly to students, as they generally know what accommodations they need. When teachers scrutinize several sources and discuss questions with advocates, they will be sure to understand what “reasonable accommodations” are, given the particular set of circumstances. Perhaps most importantly, we should keep in mind that “learning and assessment should not be impeded by the student’s disability“(Brookhart & Nitko, p.91).
Teachers are responsible for scoring assessment results accurately and in a timely fashion. Rubrics, keys, checklists, or rating scales must be used, and feedback must be given in order to help students evolve and enhance their learning experience. To avoid any personal bias, teachers may use objective questions on assessments and ask students to write their names on the back of their paper instead of the front. Consulting with colleagues can correct any scoring discrepancies and/or check for rater drift or reliability decay (see Ch. 13 for these issues). Educators must be able to justify scores given so that students understand what they need to do next. Of course, it’s also critical to return assignments and deliver feedback as soon as possible so students have ample time to fine-tune their game plans. Making sure students have access to the scoring rubric before they begin a task is a smart way teachers buy themselves extra time. Doing so should also ease the burden when it comes to scoring assignments.
Teachers are responsible for interpreting and using assessment results in order to promote positive student outcomes. Teachers should never use a single assessment as a grade; instead, they should allow students several separate occasions to demonstrate what they’ve learned. Furthermore, it is NEVER acceptable to post students’ grades or test results on a bulletin board or share this information with others. Students have a right to privacy and their scores are confidential. In addition, teachers are frequently the default resource when parents have questions about standardized testing scores, so they must be sure to interpret results accurately. This can be difficult and confusing, especially when parents tend to react and reach out demanding further details. In general, educators should prepare for in-depth, purposeful, and thorough analysis and discussions about their pupils’ performance on assessments.
Teachers are responsible for communicating comprehensive information about assessment results to help promote positive student outcomes. Educators should carefully consider how they want to share data and scoring information from assessments. Teachers also need to verify that parents have a proper perception of certain jargon (i.e. percentiles, validity) so that they can better interpret scores. Ideally, a regular class newsletter containing pertinent information should be part of teachers’ routine, and grades/progress reports can be added in every 2-3 weeks or as needed.
Not only do teachers have responsibilities, but so do students. The bulk of this chapter focuses on the former, but the latter also have an obligation to be well-mannered and kind towards peers during assessments (hopefully all of the time). Obviously, students should ask any necessary questions, particularly those pertaining to the test directions or the accommodations they may require. Honesty is also a non-negotiable: cheating, copying, and plagiarism are unacceptable and unethical, and schools have a duty to address and report these incidents.
Many types of bias exist in the educational setting, especially when it comes to testing. However, this blog post is already getting too long. Suffice it to say that bias is truly everywhere. We should all beware of stereotypes! Educators should take care not to reinforce any race, gender, cultural, and/or ethnic stereotypes in their materials, assessments, or content. For a more detailed discussion and example of this, refer to pp. 103-104 in this chapter. Lastly, all of us should be careful not to make assumptions!
Now you can easily see that teachers focus on six categories of responsibility. There’s much more information in the text if you have the time to read and sit with it. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’d love your feedback if you want to share in the comments!
Pssssst…if you’d like to read another chapter summary, please click HERE.
I have no idea what I’m doing. Is this the title, or the actual text here?
Oh look, a dog. Not just any dog, MY DOG! Meet Loki. We adopted her from KC Pet Project in 2021 (yes, she’s a COVID dog). She’s a 2 1/2 year-old German Shepherd mix with three legs and entirely too much energy. #adoptdontshop
Must love dogs.
Soon this blog will have real content related to a class I’m taking at Pitt State. I’m in grad school there working on my master’s in elementary education. This is the first time I’ve been a student since waaaaaaay back in 2000.
