Educational Assessment of Students

Citation

Brookhart, S. M., & Nitko, A. J. (2018). Educational Assessment of Students (8th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

The book has nineteen chapters in three parts, followed by ten appendices, a glossary, references and indexes. Pearson describes it as a core text for a first course in classroom assessment and educational testing, offering the basics of educational measurement together with step-by-step instructions for constructing and using formative and summative assessments.

Part I, Chapters 1–2: Classroom Decision Making and Using Assessment; Describing the Goals of Instruction

The opening chapters place assessment inside classroom decision making and then turn to stating the goals of instruction, which later chapters use to plan assessments. Appendix D supplies summaries of taxonomies of educational objectives for the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.

Part I, Chapters 3–4: Validity of Assessment Results; Reliability of Assessment Results

Validity and reliability each receive a chapter. The publisher notes that the treatment is written for classroom assessment, showing how teachers can build high-quality assessments without large-scale statistical methods; the computational detail sits in Appendix G (reliability coefficients) and Appendix F (basic statistical concepts).

Part I, Chapter 5: Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Behavior, and Legal Requirements in Educational Assessments

The last chapter of Part I covers the professional, ethical and legal side of assessment. The appendices include material on teachers' assessment knowledge and skills (A), a code of fair testing practices (B) and a code of professional responsibilities in educational measurement (C).

Part II, Chapters 6–8: Planning for Integrating Assessment and Instruction; Diagnostic and Formative Assessments; Providing Formative Feedback

Part II begins with a separate chapter on planning that joins assessment to teaching, followed by two chapters on formative assessment. The publisher notes that the treatment of feedback in Chapter 8 was revised for this edition to show its effects on achievement and on students' self-regulation of learning.

Part II, Chapters 9–10: Fill-in-the-Blank and True-False Items; Multiple-Choice and Matching Exercises

These chapters cover the objective item types named in their titles. The publisher describes the book's approach as step-by-step instruction with checklists for judging the quality of each assessment type and with examples of good and poor assessments.

Part II, Chapters 11–13: Higher-Order Thinking, Problem Solving, and Critical Thinking; Essay Assessment Tasks; Performance and Portfolio Assessments

Chapter 11 is a dedicated chapter on assessing higher-order thinking, problem solving and critical thinking. Chapters 12 and 13 address essay tasks, performance assessments and portfolios.

Part II, Chapters 14–15: Preparing Your Students to Be Assessed and Using Students' Results to Improve Your Assessments; Evaluating and Grading Student Achievement

Part II ends with preparing students for assessment, using results to improve assessments, and evaluating and grading achievement. The publisher's overview adds that the book discusses evaluations with parents.

Part III, Chapters 16–19: Standardized Achievement Tests; Interpreting Norm-Referenced Scores; Finding and Evaluating Published Assessments; Scholastic Aptitude, Career Interests, Attitudes, and Personality Tests

Part III moves from the classroom to published and standardized instruments. Chapter 16 includes revised discussion of interim, benchmark and state accountability assessment. The other chapters cover interpreting norm-referenced scores, finding and evaluating published assessments, and aptitude, interest, attitude and personality tests. Appendices H and I list published tests and test publishers.

Key Concepts

Part I: The Bases for Assessment

• Validity: the quality of the inferences drawn from assessment results, treated in Chapter 3.
• Reliability: the consistency of assessment results, treated in Chapter 4, with computational procedures in Appendix G.
• Assessment ethics and legal requirements: the professional responsibilities that Chapter 5 and Appendices B and C address.

Part II: Crafting and Using Classroom Assessments

• Diagnostic and formative assessment: assessment used while teaching to guide next steps, with a separate chapter on formative feedback.
• Item types: fill-in-the-blank, true-false, multiple-choice and matching, essay, performance and portfolio tasks.
• Grading: evaluating and grading student achievement, Chapter 15.

Part III: Interpreting and Using Standardized Tests

• Norm-referenced scores: the subject of Chapter 17.
• Published assessments: how to find and evaluate them, Chapter 18.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A complete path from principles to practice. The three parts move from validity, reliability and ethics, through the design of each major task type, to standardized tests, and the appendices add the supporting statistics and codes. A reader can follow the whole sequence in one text.
• Feedback and formative assessment get their own space. Chapters 6 to 8 devote three chapters to integrating assessment with instruction and to formative assessment and feedback, and the publisher highlights a revised treatment of feedback in this edition.
• Support for self-checking. The publisher lists checklists for judging each assessment type, examples showing how good and poor classroom assessments affect learning, and, in Appendix J, answers to even-numbered exercises.
• Higher-order thinking is addressed directly. Chapter 11 handles problem solving and critical thinking in a chapter of its own.

Limitations

• Length and breadth. Nineteen chapters, ten appendices and a glossary exceed what most single courses can cover, so instructors and self-learners must choose. Chapter 19, on aptitude, interest, attitude and personality tests, can be treated as optional in a classroom-focused course.
• A U.S. policy setting. The publisher's description refers to state-mandated tests and state accountability assessment, so readers working under other systems will need to adapt those parts.
• Technology-based assessment appears mainly in an appendix. Appendix E addresses universal design in technology-based testing, but there is no chapter on digital assessment in the table of contents.
• Little formal measurement theory. The publisher describes the book as presenting the basics of educational measurement and says its treatment of classroom assessment avoids large-scale statistical methods, so readers who want psychometric depth need a specialist text.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the assessment list this book is a full-scale teacher-education textbook. Popham's Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know is a practical introduction to designing, interpreting and using classroom assessments, and Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment is a focused account of formative assessment techniques; either is a good companion to Chapters 6 to 8. The Handbook of Formative Assessment in the Disciplines is a research handbook for readers who want to see formative assessment inside particular subjects.

For measurement depth, Furr's Psychometrics: An Introduction is a conceptual treatment of how reliability and validity are estimated and of item response theory, the topics that Chapters 3 and 4 and Appendices F and G here cover at a classroom level. Brookhart and Nitko is the natural broad first text, with these books used afterwards for practice-focused or theoretical depth.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for pre-service and in-service teachers, and suits any course that treats classroom assessment and standardized testing together. The publisher presents it as a first course and mentions no prerequisite beyond an interest in teaching; the statistical appendices cover basics.

A practical reading plan: read Part I in order, since validity and reliability underpin later chapters. In Part II, read Chapters 6 to 8 closely for planning and formative practice, then use Chapters 9 to 13 as reference while building particular assessments, working from the checklists. Chapter 15 on grading is useful before any grading decision. Part III can be read selectively: Chapters 16 and 17 for interpreting score reports, Chapter 18 when choosing a published test, and Chapter 19 only if the course covers aptitude, interest or personality measures. Use the appendices on codes and universal design as references, and try the even-numbered exercises with the answers in Appendix J to check understanding.