Gerome H.

Bautista
Instructor

Second Semester 2023-2024

Education is intended to provide all students with the
skills and competencies they need to enhance their lives
and the lives of their fellow citizens. This function would
be extremely difficult even if all students entered school with
the same abilities and competencies and even if students
learned in the same way and at the same rate.

However, they do not.

Hence, sound assessment matters.
✓ Assessment is the process that professionals use to
understand and address individual differences in the
schools.
✓ Assessment is a problem analysis and problem-solving
activity that enables school personnel to identify
students’ current level of skills, target instruction at
students’ personal levels, monitor student progress and
make adjustments in instruction, and evaluate the extent
to which students have met instructional goals.
✓ Assessment is a process of collecting data for
the purpose of making decisions about
students or schools.
✓ School personnel use assessment information to make
decisions about what students have learned, what and
where they should be taught, and the kinds of related
services (for example, speech and language services, and
psychological services) they need.
✓ To help plan instructional activities that will take students
from wherever they are in skill acquisition and move them
toward where we want them to be (competence
enhancement).
✓ To know how schools are doing with all students and to help
us build the capacity of schools to enhance student
competence (capacity building).
✓ To make decisions about schools.
✓ To know the extent to which students are profiting from their
schooling experiences.
To know:
✓ whether Antoine needs special education services to help
him in developing his reading skills
✓ Whether Claude’s behavior in class is sufficiently atypical
to require special treatments or interventions
✓ the extent to which Ellen is developing physically at a
normal rate.
Consider these scenarios:
✓ You learn that as part of the government certification
process, you must take tests that assess your knowledge
of teaching practices, learning, and child development.
✓ Mr. and Mrs. Dela Cruz receive a call from their child’s
third-grade teacher, who says he is concerned about
Mario’s performance on a reading test. He would like to
refer Mario for further testing to determine whether
Mario has a learning disability.
Consider these scenarios:
✓ Mr. and Mrs. Delos Santos tell you that their son is not
eligible for special education services because he scored
“too high” on an intelligence test.
✓ In response to a publication of international assessments
showing that Filipino students rank low in comparison to
students in other Southeast Asian countries, the DepEd
Secretary issues a call for more rigorous educational
standards for all students.
Consider these scenarios:
✓ The superintendent of schools in a large urban district
learns that only 40 percent of the students in her school
district passed the division achievement test.
✓ Your local school district asks for volunteers to serve on a
task force to design a measure of technological literacy to
use as a test with students.
• People react strongly when test scores are used to make
interpersonal comparisons in which they or those they love
look inferior.
• We expect parents to react strongly when test scores are
used to make decisions about their children’s life
opportunities
• Entire communities are keenly interested when test scores
from their schools are reported and compared with scores
from schools in other communities.
Screening Are there recognized problems?

Progress Is the student making adequate progress? (Toward

Monitoring
individual goals and Toward state standards)

Instructional What can we do to enhance competence and build

planning and
modification capacity, and how can we do it?
Resource
allocation Are additional resources needed?

Eligibility for
special education Is the student eligible for special education and
services related services?
Program
evaluation Are the instructional programs that are being used
effective?
Accountability
decisions Does what we do lead to desired outcomes?
In assessing students, it is critical to think about the kind of decision
you are making. Different kinds of decisions require different
kinds of assessments (both different tests and different
assessment processes).
For example, if one is attempting to decide whether a student meets
the eligibility criteria for having intellectual disability, it would be
necessary to administer an individual intelligence test.
If one is attempting to plan an instructional program for a student
with intellectual disability, it is not necessary to administer an
intelligence test. Rather, we need to know the specific skills that she
does and does not have.
After we decide a student is eligible for special education
services, our focus should be on assessment of alterable
behaviors (behaviors that can be changed). Educators
can work to enhance student competence in reading, math,
writing, and other academic content areas. They can change
the way they teach students to decode words or to write in
complete sentences.
As educators, we can change what happens in school. As
citizens, we can work to change what happens outside of
school.
The instruction a student has received is assessed to
ascertain whether the student’s difficulties stem from
inappropriate curriculum or inadequate teaching.
When instruction is found to be inadequate, the student
should be given appropriate instruction to determine
whether it alleviates the difficulty.
When appropriate instruction fails to remediate the
difficulty, further assessment of the student is carried out.
Assessing Instruction

INSTRUCTIONAL CHALLENGE
When instruction is found to be inadequate, the student
should be given appropriate instruction to determine
whether it alleviates the difficulty.
When appropriate instruction fails to remediate the
difficulty, further assessment of the student is carried out.
INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT
Instruction involves more than appropriate curriculum. It is
a complex activity, the outcomes of which depend on the
interaction of many factors. Recognition of this fact has led
to efforts to assess the qualitative nature of students’
instructional environments (Ysseldyke & Christenson, 2002).
In doing so, educators gather information on the extent to
which evidence-based components of effective instruction
are present in the instruction that individual students
receive.
INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT
• Classroom management: Classroom management refers
to a collection of organizational goals centered on using
time wisely in order to maximize learning and on
maintaining a safe classroom environment that is
conducive to student learning.
• Learning management: The organization and
management of the classroom to ensure learning require
careful attention to detail. Essentially, teachers must
oversee the learning situation.
Assessing Learners
When students have received appropriate instruction but
are still experiencing academic or behavioral problems,
school personnel usually begin to assemble existing
information to document the nature of the problem (that is,
to identify specific learning strengths and weaknesses) and
to generate hypotheses about the problem’s likely solution.
They do so using observations, recollections, tests, and
professional judgments.
School personnel sometimes equate testing and assessment.
Testing consists of administering a particular set of
questions to an individual or group of individuals to obtain a
score. That score is the end product of testing. A test is
only one of several assessment techniques or procedures for
gathering information.
During the process of assessment, data from observations,
recollections, tests, and professional judgments all come into
play.
 • It provides highly accurate, detailed, verifiable
information not only about the person being assessed
Observations but also about the surrounding contexts. Observations
can be categorized as either nonsystematic or
systematic.

• Recalled observations and interpretations of behavior

and events are frequently used as an additional source
Recollections of information. People who are familiar with the
student can be very useful in providing information
through interviews and rating scales.
 • A test is a predetermined set of questions or tasks
Tests
for which predetermined types of behavioral
responses are sought. Tests yield two types of
information—quantitative and qualitative.

• Judgments by teachers, counselors, psychologists,

Professional and practically any other professional school
Judgements employee may be useful in particular
circumstances.
The procedures for gathering data and conducting
assessments are matters that are rightfully of great concern
to the general public—both individuals who are directly
affected by the assessments (such as parents, students, and
classroom teachers) and individuals who are indirectly
affected (for example, taxpayers and elected officials).
Concerns of the General Public
Decisions about special and remedial education have
consequences. Some consequences are desired, such as extra
services for students who are entitled to special education.
Other consequences are unwanted, such as denial of special
education services or diminished self-esteem resulting from
a disability label.
Concerns of Certification Boards
When pupils are tested, we should be able to assume that the
person doing the testing has adequate training to conduct
the testing correctly (that is, establish rapport, administer
the test correctly, score the test, and accurately interpret the
test).
Tests are samples of behavior. Different tests sample
different behavior, and tests differ in their technical
adequacy. It is important when interpreting test results that
users take into serious account the kinds of behaviors
sampled by the tests and the tests’ technical adequacy.
New laws, regulations, or guidelines specify and, in some
cases, mandate new assessment practices. New tests become
available, and old ones go away. Governments change their
special education eligibility criteria, and technological
advances enable us to gather data in new and more efficient
ways.
Also, the population of students attending schools changes,
bringing new challenges to educational personnel who are
working to enhance the academic and behavioral
competence of all students.