Student assessment as it is and as it could be

Do we learn more from our mistakes or from our successes? This is question more than a rhetorical. It is also procedural. If we learn more from our errors, then why do we teach for “right” answers and ignore or remove the other answers when assessing students’ achievement?

Item Response Theory (IRT) is our most powerful assessment analysis tool in regular use today. The best designed tests use IRT’s ability to provide scale positions for all answers in order to assure that all options are discriminating. Why then do we not find out what is being discriminated and use it to assess our students’ achievement?

Our research shows that using the order from all answers provides thrice the information about achievement as we get from the right answers alone. When we compare our students’ scale changes from all answers with these changes from the right answers alone, the right-answer changes misrepresents the actual changes for more than two thirds of the students taking this same test.

This loss of information, by leaving out the alternative answers, causes this discrepancy because using only the sum of the right answers is both mathematically and psychologically invalid. When we know what these overlooked answers can tell us about achievement, this invalidity makes good scientific sense. We are destroying effective education by using an invalid scoring procedure.

Students’ alternative answers tell us how they are thinking and make it possible for us to help them think clearly and discriminatively. By our focus upon the answers we expect, we turn their minds off and loose the creative contributions they might have made.

This book, whose cover is shown above at the right, addresses these questions with answers that will surprise and excite you. It is semi-autobiographical and told anecdotally for easy access to these ideas. We can double the rate at which our students by teaching them how to think and how to learn in addition to teaching them what to remember.

Here is what one reviewer had to say about this book:

The only lord one should answer to is oneself. "Making Peasants into Kings" is an inspirational guide from Dr. Jay C. Powell who provides his opinions on how to better oneself, stating that many people become peasants under the king's of the world, obeying to their whims and never striving for better. He urges people to become kings of their lives, and instructs them on how. "Making Peasants into Kings" is an intriguing and fascinating read which shouldn't be overlooked. (See: Amazon.com Review)

Visit www.better-schooling-systems.org where assistance in implementing this option is being made available. The author will send you a signed copy to you for at least $25.00 donation as a member of Better Schooling Systems.