Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know

Written with energy and wit, this reader-friendly text discusses practical ways in which teachers can develop and use well-written tests to improve their effectiveness in the classroom. With its constant attention to the instructional implications of educational assessment, Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know,7/e, helps readers become assessment literate -- to understand the fundamental concepts and processes of educational testing that will influence teachers' hour-to-hour instructional decisions. The text recognizes and highlights the exponential increase in the importance of educational assessment in an era of common core state standards, national assessment consortia, and teacher-evaluations based on students' test scores. However, because the seventh edition was completed at a time when the nature of high-stakes educational testing in the U.S. was genuinely unsettled, the author consistently informs the readers of instances when, in truth, they need to "stay tuned" for the next development in today's high-stakes U.S. testing arena. As a result, the reader feels part of an exciting and evolving profession.

W. James Popham,  professor emeritus at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, began his career as a high school teacher in Oregon and then moved to the University of California at Los Angeles, where for nearly 30 years he taught courses in instructional methods for prospective teachers as well as courses in evaluation and measurement for graduate students. At UCLA he won several distinguished teaching awards and was recognized by UCLA Today as one of UCLA’s top 20 professors of the twentieth century.   The author of more than 30 books and hundreds of scholarly papers, Dr. Popham is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and the recipient of the National Council on Measurement in Education Award for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement.

1           Why Do Teachers Need to Know about Assessment?    

2           Deciding What to Assess and How to Assess It    

3           Reliability of Assessment    

4           Validity    

5           Absence-of-Bias    

6           Selected-Response Tests    

7           Constructed-Response Tests    

8           Performance Assessment    

9           Portfolio Assessment    

10         Affective Assessment    

11         Improving Teacher-Developed Assessments   

12         Formative Assessment    

13         Making Sense Out of Standardized Test Scores   

14         Appropriate and Inappropriate Test-Preparation Practices  

15         The Evaluation of Instruction   

16         Assessment-Based Grading

Extended Applications

Glossary

Index