The Role of Assessment Testing in Education

One ideal that was stressed is that we need to use multiple indicators of student performance for assessment. The public uses assessment to see if students are prepared to enter the workforce. The schools use assessment to gauge curriculum. Formal assessments include standardized reading tests and criterion-referenced tests. Informal assessments include informal reading inventories, analyzing oral reading miscues and analyzing running records. The chapter also describes how important the process of portfolio assessment can be. This is a way to connect what the students have produced with instruction. It provides for both the teacher and student a way of reflecting on past work and looking towards future products. It is a good communication tool. The chapter also talks about how trends in reading assessment tend to vary in the field of education and this is because educators who support standard setting and proficiency testing and those who promote authentic, performance-based tests hold different perspectives.
             One article I read called Reading Assessment and Instruction Go Hand in Hand tell about how readers need to develop critical reading skills, how teachers can teach students to develop these skills and how these skills can be evaluated. The author feels that by using the Six Traits of an Effective Reader assessment that student reading performance is broken down into teachable and assessable skills. Students are able to see their performance and set goals using the published scoring. The article explains reading skills and appropriate assessment instrument that may be used at various stages of development. The stages include: kindergarten through second grade where a balance of skill acquisition and construction of meaning is needed; grades three through five where students transition from narrative texts to informational reading in all subject areas; middle school where students apply their reading skills across the curriculum and high school and beyond where critical reading can encourage to become lifelong learners.