Principles of High Quality Assessment

1. Clarity of Learning Targets
Assessment can be made precise, accurate and dependable only if what are to be achieved are clearly stated and feasible. The learning targets, involving knowledge, reasoning, skills, products and effects, need to be stated in behavioral terms which denote something which can be observed through the behavior of the students.
a. Cognitive Targets
Benjamin Bloom (1954) proposed a hierarchy of educational objectives at the cognitive level. These are:
- Knowledge – acquisition of facts, concepts and theories
- Comprehension - understanding, involves cognition or awareness of the interrelationships
- Application – transfer of knowledge from one field of study to another of from one concept to another concept in the same discipline
- Analysis – breaking down of a concept or idea into its components and explaining g the concept as a composition of these concepts
- Synthesis – opposite of analysis, entails putting together the components in order to summarize the concept
- Evaluation and Reasoning – valuing and judgment or putting the “worth” of a concept or principle.
b. Skills, Competencies and Abilities Targets
- Skills – specific activities or tasks that a student can proficiently do
- Competencies – cluster of skills
- Abilities – made up of relate competencies categorized as:
i. Cognitive
ii. Affective
iii. Psychomotor
c. Products, Outputs and Project Targets
- tangible and concrete evidence of a student’s ability
- need to clearly specify the level of workmanship of projects
i. expert
ii. skilled
iii. novice
2. Appropriateness of Assessment Methods
a. Written-Response Instruments
- Objective tests – appropriate for assessing the various levels of hierarchy of educational objectives
- Essays – can test the students’ grasp of the higher level cognitive skills
- Checklists – list of several characteristics or activities presented to the subjects of a study, where they will analyze and place a mark opposite to the characteristics.
b. Product Rating Scales
- Used to rate products like book reports, maps, charts, diagrams, notebooks, creative endeavors
- Need to be developed to assess various products over the years
c. Performance Tests - Performance checklist
- Consists of a list of behaviors that make up a certain type of performance
- Used to determine whether or not an individual behaves in a certain way when asked to complete a particular task
d. Oral Questioning – appropriate assessment method when the objectives are to:
- Assess the students’ stock knowledge and/or
- Determine the students’ ability to communicate ideas in coherent verbal sentences.

e. Observation and Self Reports
- Useful supplementary methods when used in conjunction with oral questioning and performance tests

3. Properties of Assessment Methods
a. Validity – appropriateness, correctness, meaningfulness and usefulness of the specific conclusions that a teacher reaches regarding the teaching-learning situation.
- Content validity – content and format of the instrument
i. Students’ adequate experience
ii. Coverage of sufficient material
iii. Reflect the degree of emphasis
- Face validity – outward appearance of the test, the lowest form of test validity
- Criterion-related validity – the test is judge against a specific criterion
- Construct validity – the test is loaded on a “construct” or factor

b. Reliability – consistency, dependability, stability which can be estimated by
- Split-half method
- Calculated using the
i. Spearman-Brown prophecy formula
ii. Kuder-Richardson – KR 20 and KR21
- Consistency of test results when the same test is administered at two different time periods
i. Test-retest method
ii. Correlating the two test results

c. Fairness – assessment procedure needs to be fair, which means:
- Students need to know exactly what the learning targets are and wat method of assessment will be used
- Assessment has to be viewed as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to weed out poor and slow learners
- Freedom from teacher-stereotyping

d. Practicality and Efficiency
- Teachers should be familiar with the test,
- does not require too much time
- implementable

e. Ethics in Assessment – “right and wrong”
- Conforming to the standards of conduct of a given profession or group
- Ethical issues that may be raised
i. Possible harm to the participants.
ii. Confidentiality.
iii. Presence of concealment or deception.
iv. Temptation to assist students.

(Source: Adanced Methods of Educational Assessment by De. Guzman)