Assessment Literacy for Educators in a Hurry

Assessment Literacy for Educators in a Hurry
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2018-08-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416626514

What is assessment literacy? It's a handful of fundamental understandings about the testing concepts and procedures that influence educational decisions. And it just might be the most cost-effective means of real school improvement. With characteristic humor and aplomb, assessment expert W. James Popham strips away the psychometrician-speak and condenses the complexities of educational testing to six practical and action-oriented understandings about validity, reliability, fairness, score reporting, formative assessment, and affective assessment. This book is for busy educators at the classroom and leadership levels who want Tests that are worth the valuable time they take to administer. Tests that accurately measure what student have learned. Tests that fairly reflect teacher and school effectiveness. Tests that provide the instructionally useful data that will help students learn faster and better. Assessment Literacy for Educators in a Hurry is the fastest route to acquiring the measurement moxie necessary to understand and advocate for better assessment practices and build a case for stopping ineffective and harmful ones. In just a few hours' time, you can pick up the knowledge you need to do a whole lot of good—for your students, yourself, and our schools.

Instruction That Measures Up

Instruction That Measures Up
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2009-05-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416616195

High-stakes testing. Mandated content standards and benchmarks. Public scrutiny of student and school performance. Accountability. Teachers today are challenged to provide instruction that will measure up: to the expectations of administrators, parents, and taxpayers; to their own professional standards; and, most essentially, to the needs of students. Policy debates rage in the press, and pedagogical pundits always have a new and better solution to offer, but inside the walls of the classroom, instruction boils down to teachers deciding what they want their students to learn, planning how to promote that learning, implementing those plans, and then determining if the plans worked. And the best instructional decisions are informed by empirical research, assessment evidence, and the sound judgment of the professional educator. In this book, W. James Popham calls on his half-century in the classroom to provide a practical, four-stage framework for guiding teachers through their most important instructional decisions: curriculum determination, instructional design, instructional monitoring, and instructional evaluation. Along the way, he emphasizes the critical ways in which assessment can and should influence instruction, advocates for a dash of curricular insurrection, and offers advice for maintaining both teaching excellence and teachers' sanity.

Transformative Assessment

Transformative Assessment
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416607269

Testing expert W. James Popham provides the definitive nuts-and-bolts introduction to formative assessment, a process with the power to transform teaching and learning.

Test Better, Teach Better

Test Better, Teach Better
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2003-08-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 141660121X

The right kinds of tests, correctly applied, can help every teacher become a better teacher. But unless you know the nuts and bolts of effective test design and application, you may be collecting the wrong data; misinterpreting data; and drawing off-base conclusions about what students know and can do, what to teach next, and how effective your instruction has been. In Test Better, Teach Better, assessment expert W. James Popham explores the links between assessment and instruction and provides a jargon-free look at classroom and large-scale test construction, interpretation, and application. Featuring sample items, testing tips, and recommended resources, this "crash course" in instructionally focused assessment includes * The four types of instructional decisions that testing will illuminate. * What you really need to know about measurement concepts like validity, reliability, and bias. * The advantages and disadvantages of various test formats and experience-based rules for creating great items in each. * The benefits of assessing student affect and guidelines for doing it in your own classroom. In addition, Popham offers practical advice for dealing with today's myriad testing targets and explains how standards-based achievement tests currently don't (but could) provide both accountability evidence and useful instructional information. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

The Truth about Testing

The Truth about Testing
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0871205238

Discusses good and bad student testing, shows teachers how to construct accurate methods of assessment and use their results to teach, and explains how teachers can protect themselves and students by educating parents, policy makers, and others about what kinds of testing are effective.

First Year Teacher's Survival Guide

First Year Teacher's Survival Guide
Author: Julia G. Thompson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2009-05-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0470493313

The best-selling First Year Teacher's Survival Kit gives new teachers a wide variety of tested strategies, activities, and tools for creating a positive and dynamic learning environment while meeting the challenges of each school day. Packed with valuable tips, the book helps new teachers with everything from becoming effective team players and connecting with students to handling behavior problems and working within diverse classrooms. The new edition is fully revised and updated to cover changes in the K-12 classroom over the past five years. Updates to the second edition include: • New ways teachers can meet the professional development requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act • Entirely new section on helping struggling readers, to address the declining literacy rate among today’s students • Expanded coverage of helpful technology solutions for the classroom • Expanded information on teaching English Language Learners • Greater coverage of the issues/challenges facing elementary teachers • More emphasis on how to reach and teach students of poverty • Updated study techniques that have proven successful with at-risk students • Tips on working effectively within a non-traditional school year schedule • The latest strategies for using graphic organizers • More emphasis on setting goals to help students to succeed • More information on intervening with students who are capable but choose not to work • Updated information on teachers’ rights and responsibilities regarding discipline issues • Fully revised Resources appendix including the latest educational Web sites and software

Transformative Assessment in Action

Transformative Assessment in Action
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2011
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416612998

This book examines formative assessment conducted in the classroom and how educators can plan and apply results in the real-world. Provides chapter-specific reflection questions that lay out practical models and guidance for all education levels.

Why Are We Still Doing That?

Why Are We Still Doing That?
Author: Pérsida Himmele
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2021-09-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 141663052X

The best-selling authors of Total Participation Techniques address 16 common educational practices that undermine student learning and offer better ways to achieve the intended aims.

Approaching Difficulties in Literacy Development

Approaching Difficulties in Literacy Development
Author: Felicity Fletcher-Campbell
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2009-09-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1848607717

Approaching Difficulties in Literacy Development: Assessments, Pedagogy and Programmes considers the complexity of literacy difficulties, showing how research into literacy difficulties has to be multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary and involve a range of research approaches and methods. The chapters show that this is necessary to accommodate the wide range of issues that can, potentially, explain literacy difficulties and suggest strategies and interventions to ease those difficulties. This Reader is relevant to all postgraduate students of Literacy, as well as educators, professionals and policy makers.