e-valuation

Just as it makes little sense to talk about the validity of a test, it makes little sense to talk about a formative test. Although there is a good emphasis on formative assessment of student learning, there is an unfortunate confusion about what the formative means. Too often the instrument is identified as formative, when in fact it is how the information from the instrument is used that makes the evaluation formative. The same test and the results of that test can be used either formatively or summatively. Just as the test is not valid (it is the inferences that are made that have or lack validity), neither is the test itself formative or summative. Popham has a nice little discussion of this in his Ed Week piece Formative Assessment–A Process, Not a Test.

Good report on the flaw in some current thinking about teacher evaluation from NEPC. The value added approach is a simplistic strategy for determining teaching effectiveness.

Due Diligence and the Evaluation of Teachers
by Derek C. Briggs, Ben Domingue
February 8, 2011

The research on which the Los Angeles Times relied for its August 2010 teacher effectiveness reporting was demonstrably inadequate to support the published rankings. Using the same L.A. Unified School District data and the same methods as the Times, this study probes deeper and finds the earlier research to have serious weaknesses.