Assessment and Data Use
Assessment and Data Use
This domain tests how to select, design, interpret, and respond to assessments. Expect items on formative and summative purposes, validity, reliability, bias, feedback, rubrics, item analysis, and using data to adjust instruction.
Core concepts
- Purpose match: formative assessment informs teaching during learning; summative assessment certifies achievement at the end.
- Validity means the assessment measures the intended construct; reliability means consistency; bias means irrelevant factors unfairly affect scores.
- Quality items: align items to objectives, use clear language, avoid trick questions, and use rubrics with observable criteria.
- Feedback: be timely, specific, and actionable; feed up (goal), back (where student is), and forward (next step).
- Data use: disaggregate by item and student group, distinguish whole-class reteaching from small-group intervention, and avoid overinterpreting a single quiz.
Worked example
After a 10th-grade algebra quiz, 70% of students miss items requiring factoring before simplifying rational expressions. The teacher reviews item distractors and finds errors cluster at one prerequisite. She reteaches factoring with worked examples, gives a short formative check, and keeps the summative unit test as scheduled. Reasoning: the data identify a prerequisite gap, not a need to reteach every topic, and the formative check tests whether the reteach worked before the summative.
Traps
Do not use formative scores as summative grades; do not assume a test is valid because it is reliable; do not change instruction from one item without checking patterns; and do not confuse accommodations (access) with modifications (changed expectations).