Analysis of Students’ Assessments in Middle School Curriculum Materials:
Aiming Precisely at Benchmarks and Standards
Luli Stern
Department of Education in Technology and Science
Technion–IIT
Technion City, Haifa 32000
Israel
Andrew Ahlgren
Project 2061
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1333
H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Received 9 October 2000; Accepted 30 April 2002
Originally published in the Journal
of Research in Science Teaching
Volume 39, Issue 9, Pages 889-910.
Copyright © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Reproduced
with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. No further republication or
redistribution is permitted without the written permission of the copyright
owner.
Abstract
Assessment influences every level of the
education system and is one of the most crucial catalysts for reform
in science curriculum and instruction. Teachers, administrators,
and others who choose, assemble, or develop assessments face the
difficulty of judging whether tasks are truly aligned with national
or state standards and whether they are effective in revealing what
students actually know. Project 2061 of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science has developed and field-tested a procedure
for analyzing curriculum materials, including their assessments,
in terms of how well they are likely to contribute to the attainment
of benchmarks and standards. With respect to assessment in curriculum
materials, this procedure evaluates whether this assessment has the
potential to reveal whether students have attained specific ideas
in benchmarks and standards and whether information gained from students'
responses can be used to inform subsequent instruction. Using this
procedure, Project 2061 had produced a database of analytical reports
on nine widely used science middle school curriculum materials. The
analysis of assessments included in these materials shows that
whereas currently available materials devote significant sections
in their instruction to ideas included in national standards documents,
students are typically not assessed on these ideas. The analysis
results described in the report point to strengths and limitations
of these widely used assessments and identify a range of good and
poor assessment tasks that can shed light on important characteristics
of good assessment.
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