Today we talked about how we should evaluate reliability and validity. It was interesting to think about how we take for granted that a test does what it is intended to do. We think about the SAT’s as a measure of potential college success and on some level it might be but it fails to take into account all of the potential social and emotional aspects that come with college.
It was also interesting to think about how we judge the values of testing outcomes. When we consider a norm, the demographics must be evaluated to ensure that we are comparing like items. It does not make sense to compare the math scores of 1st graders to those of 5th graders if we are trying to determine student success within their norm.
Overall I think that today’s class drove home the point that we must think about our goals and objectives in everything we do. If we are assessing students, it is important to think about our choice of instrumentation and if the results are likely to give us the desired information.
