Assessment and Evaluation
What to know
Know formative assessment (during learning, to adjust instruction) versus summative (after learning, to judge achievement). Understand validity (measures what it claims), reliability (consistency), and fairness/bias. Be able to distinguish norm-referenced from criterion-referenced interpretation, and diagnostic assessment. Know reliability threats like scoring inconsistency and test length, and validity threats like teaching to a narrow subset of the domain. Understand rubrics (analytic vs. holistic), performance tasks, portfolios, and feedback that is specific and timely. Be familiar with alternative assessment for English learners and students with disabilities, and with accommodations on tests. Know how to interpret common statistics conceptually: mean, median, mode, range, and standard deviation.
Traps
Questions often ask which assessment best informs next-day instruction-that's formative, not summative. Watch for reliability vs. validity swaps: a scale that reads the same weight twice is reliable but may be invalid if miscalibrated. Don't confuse accommodation (same construct, different access) with modification (different construct). Also watch for feedback that is evaluative ("good job") rather than descriptive.
Worked example / rule of thumb
An exit ticket given at the end of class is formative if you use it to regroup tomorrow; the same ticket becomes summative if it only goes in the gradebook. Rule of thumb: ask what decision the data will drive-if it changes tomorrow's teaching, it's formative.