Reading Assessment Tools

Mar 11

Types of Assessments

There are different purposes for assessments. There are formative assessments, which are used to make instructional decisions a summative assessments to measure what was learned.

Formative assessment for learning.
Summative assessment of learning.

There are also different types of assessments, as outlined below. A single assessment can sometimes serve more than one purpose or fit in more than one category.

Screening assessments

According to IES, "Beginning readers who are struggling need help right away but they often don't receive it until grade 2 or 3 after they have been officially diagnosed with a learning disability or have fallen far behind their peers. Key components of an effective literacy systems of support include the screening of all students and ongoing monitoring of their progress in core reading skills. When a school only assesses those students who are already demonstrating problems with reading, other students who are at risk for future reading difficulties can be overlooked. This is why universal screening is such a critical first step in determining the scope of reading support a school needs."

Screening assessments are given to all students, usually at the beginning and middle of each school year and as students move to the school, to identify students who may need help. Screening assessments should be relatively fast and efficient to administer and be valid, predictive, and reliable to determine the path of each child’s reading development. Examples include Aimsweb, DIBELS, and IDELS in Spanish. They are not intended to diagnose specific gaps; but rather to identify children who need to take the diagnostic assessments.

Diagnostic assessments

Used to assess specific skills or components of reading such as phonemic awareness, phonics skills, and fluency. The results of diagnostic assessments inform instruction and intervention. Diagnostic assessments can be formal standardized tests of children’s component reading and language abilities or informal measures such as criterion-referenced tests and informal reading inventories. Not all children need this kind of in-depth reading assessment, which is most important for struggling and at-risk readers.

Norm-referenced assessments are formal assessments, often used as diagnostic tools. The score compares the student’s skills to a defined population used in standardizing the test (i.e., how did this student perform on these tasks compared to other students in the same grade or age range). Examples of these tests include the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. Typically these kinds of tests should not be administered more than once a year.

Criterion-referenced assessments are both formal and informal assessments, and are also used as diagnostic tools. The score compares the student’s skills to a defined set of skills and a goal (criterion) for mastery. These assessments are administered before instruction and after instruction to measure a student’s skill growth. An example of this type of test is the i-Ready Diagnostic for Reading and Core Phonics Survey. Usually these kinds of tests can be administered more than once a year.

Progress monitoring assessments

Measure a student’s overall progress during the school year or progress toward acquiring specific skills that have been taught. Examples of these kinds of measures include curriculum-based measures (CBMs), benchmarks, criterion-referenced tests, and informal measures such as observation checklists and reading inventories. These tests can be given more than once a year and, depending on the assessment, sometimes quite frequently.

High stakes assessments

These large scale outcome assessments are given to all students within the same grade, usually at the end of the year. They measure students’ skills against grade-level expectations. Outcome assessments are intended to be used to make decisions about students, teachers, a school, or even an entire school system. They are called high-stakes assessments because decisions are made based on the results.

Listen to this Podcast from Cult of Pedagogy titled Standardized Tests Aren’t Going Anywhere. So What Do We Do? (You can start at Minute 8:00 of the episode) https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/standardized-tests-what-to-do/