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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.
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.
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.
Why aren't more schools seeing significant improvement in students' reading ability when they implement Response to Intervention (RTI) or Multitiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in their literacy programs? These frameworks serve as a way for educators to identify struggling readers and provide the small-group instruction they need to improve their skills. But the success stories are too few in number, and most schools have too little to show for their efforts. What accounts for the difference? What are successful schools doing that sets them apart? Author and education consultant Susan Hall provides answers in the form of 10 success factors for implementing MTSS. Based on her experience in schools across the United States, she explains the "whys" and "hows" of Grouping by skill deficit and using diagnostic assessments to get helpful data for grouping and regrouping. Implementing an instructional delivery model, including the "walk-to-intervention" model. Using intervention time wisely and being aware of what makes intervention effective. Providing teachers with the materials they need for effective lessons and delivering differentiated professional development for administrators, reading coaches, teachers, and instructional assistants. Monitoring progress regularly and conducting nonevaluative observations of intervention instruction. Practical, comprehensive, and evidence-based, 10 Success Factors for Literacy Intervention provides the guidance educators need to move from disappointing results to solid gains in students' literacy achievement.
The lovable, bumbling Santa from Shhh! returns in this fun-filled sequel. It's Christmas Eve and Santa has overslept. Santa hurries, but with one disaster after another, will he ever be able to deliver all the presents in time for Christmas?
With public and political demand for educational accountability never higher, educators are under enormous pressure to raise students' scores on standardized achievement tests. Policymakers are backing large-scale, high-stakes testing programs as the best way to determine which schools are failing and which schools are succeeding, and the only way to ensure the quality of students' schooling. Nonsense, says distinguished educator and author W. James Popham. In The Truth About Testing: An Educator's Call to Action, Popham explores both the absurdity and the serious destructive consequences of today's testing programs. He uses actual items drawn from current standardized achievement tests to show what these tests really measure and why they should never be used to evaluate school quality or teacher ability. But, Popham insists, there's a way out of this measurement mess. And it's up to educators to take the first steps. Throughout this commonsense and conversational resource, the author appeals to educators to build their own assessment literacy, spread the word about harmful testing, and reexamine how they use test data in the classroom. He provides * Advice for distinguishing between sound and unsound large-scale tests. * Guidelines to help teachers maximize the instructional benefits properly constructed classroom tests can bring. * Evidence-gathering strategies for teachers and administrators trying to survive and thrive in an accountability-driven environment. The book closes with a series of action items for educators interested in ending the score-boosting game, halting the erosion of educational quality, and establishing the kind of testing that can improve student learning. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.
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
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.
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.
This clear, no-nonsense book guides current and future teachers through the concepts, tools, methods, and goals of classroom literacy assessment. The expert authors examine the roles of formative, summative, and benchmark assessments; demystify state and national tests and standards; and show how assessment can seamlessly inform instruction. Strategies for evaluating, choosing, and interpreting assessments are discussed, as are ways to communicate data to parents and administrators. User-friendly resources include boxed vignettes from teachers and researchers, practical assessment tips (and traps to avoid), and 12 reproducible planning forms and handouts. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.