Assessment literacy

Assessment literacy is the possession of knowledge about

the basic principles of sound assessment practice, including its
terminology, the development and use of assessment
methodologies and techniques, and familiarity with standards of
quality in assessment. Teacher and students understand that
assessment, both informal and formal, is central to teaching and
learning and use it formatively at all times to determine where
individuals and groups are with their learning. Teachers have the
capability to gather dependable information, aggregate and
analyze it, and use it to further teaching and learning for
individuals and groups of students.
The primary purpose of assessment is to improve students
learning, as both student and teacher respond to the information
that it provides. Information is needed about what knowledge,
understanding or skills students need. By finding out what
students currently know, understand and can do, any gap
between the two can be made apparent. Assessment is the
process of gaining information about the gap and learning is
about attempts to reduce the gap.

Capabilities associated with assessment literacy:

Use of assessment information

The teacher understands that assessment, both informal and

formal, is central to teaching and learning and uses it
formatively at all times to determine where individuals and
groups are with their learning.

The teacher always involves students in all forms of

assessment (what to assess, how and when, how to use the
results to assist their further learning). Students see assessment
as essential in helping them monitor their learning.

The teacher is aware of the essential value of self and peer

assessment and enables students to independently assess
their own and other students progress.
Use of assessment tools
The teacher knows when and how to use appropriate
assessment tools in the relevant subject, and is skilled in all
aspects of administration, marking, and, interpretation.
The teacher understands and can explain all
relevant statistical terms; for example, norm,
mean, standard deviation, stanine.
Assessment materials are used fully in accordance with
guidelines to
deliver dependable information. Validity, reliability, and
quality control are seen to be important. Moderation is
carried out carefully. Routine cross-checks are made on
marking and data entry accuracy.
The 'big picture' of assessment

The teacher understands how aggregated achievement data

is used school-wide, nationally and internationally, and how these
big picture analyses relate to his/her classroom practice and
whole school review.
Principles of Effective Literacy Assessment

Cooper (1997) discusses eight principles of effective literacy

assessment, based in part on the work of Farr and Tone (1994),
Harp (1991), Valencia, (1990a, 1990b), and Valencia, Hiebert, and
Afflerbach (1994):
1. Assessment should be an ongoing process. Literacy
assessment is not a test given at the end of a unit or a block of
study, separate from the ongoing daily activities of instruction.
Instead, assessment should take place every time a child reads,
writes, speaks, listens, or views something. When assessment is
viewed as an ongoing part of instruction, it becomes natural and
expected.
2. Effective assessment is an integral part of
instruction. The best forms of assessment are the routine daily
activities of instruction, which tell us exactly how our students are
performing. By comparing the work of individual students over
time, we can determine patterns of growth. When a student
writes a story about her trip to visit friends, you can assess her
ability to organize ideas, express herself, and use the various
conventions of language. Overall, you get a picture of how
effectively she constructs meaning through writing. ...
3. Assessment must be authentic, reflecting 'real' reading
and writing. For years, this author has asked teachers in
workshops and classes, 'If you want to know how well children
read and write, what do you need to have them do?' They have
always replied in unison, 'Have them read and write.' Even in the
heyday of using isolated skill assessment practices, teachers
knew for years that marking, circling, and underlining did not
reflect authentic reading and writing. The tasks of assessment in
a literacy-centered classroom must reflect and honor the
'wholeness' of language (Harp, 1991). It is possible for learners to
be very effective readers and writers and not do well on a test
covering an isolated piece of the process. ...
4. Assessment should be a collaborative, reflective
process. It should not be viewed as something the teacher does
to the students. We know learning is a collaborative process; we
learn alongside and with our students and our peers (Collins,

Brown & Newman, 1986). If this is true for learning, it is also true
for assessment. As students collaborate with their teacher on
assessment, they reflect and ask themselves, 'How have I done?'
'What can I do to improve?' 'How can I use what I have learned?'
Thus, students should help you assess and evaluate their own
progress in literacy. ... Collaboration means students sometimes
help select what they want evaluated. This becomes a joint effort
in which teacher and students work and think together, and
should also involve parents (Dillon, 1990). When students,
teacher, and parents collaborate on evaluation, the responsibility
is shared, as it should be.
5. Effective assessment is multidimensional. Quality
assessment should use several different tasks, such as samples of
writing, student retellings, records of independent reading, selfevaluations, and checklists. In making these choices, you need to
trust your own intuition based on your knowledge and
observations about students. More formal types of assessments
have proclaimed their validity and reliability using various
statistical procedures. Although many of the techniques being
suggested today are more informal, we must still know that they
are trustworthy (Valencia, 1990a), and one way to determine this
is to use multiple tasks to get a consistent pattern of
performance. Cambourne and Turbill (1990) argue that data
generated from multiple sources using teacher observations and
judgments are just as trustworthy and 'scientific' as those
generated by what have been called 'measurement-based'
approaches to assessment.
6. Assessment should be developmentally and culturally
appropriate. We know children develop literacy and their ability
to construct meaning by 'trying out' their reading and writing and
making approximations. Therefore, tests or procedures that
require absolute mastery at a given level or complete mastery of
a given set of words before moving to a new book are completely
contrary to how we know children learn. We must select
assessment tasks that honor children's developmental levels of
learning. At the same time, we must consider the cultural
diversity of our classrooms. Children from different cultures have
not only different language bases but also different patterns and

styles of learning (Au, 1993; Garcia, [G. E.] 1994). We must take
these into consideration as we plan our assessment procedures.
7. Effective assessment identifies students'
strengths. Children learn to construct meaning by doing what
they already know how to do and by getting support in gaining
new strategies and techniques. This is using what Vygotsky
(1978) calls the zone of proximal development. Effective
assessment therefore must help us identify what our students do
well. For many years, we have given students tests to find out
what they do not know; then we proceeded to plan lessons totally
around these weaknesses. This is contrary to how students
acquire language and contrary to how they learn to construct
meaning.
8. Assessment must be based on what we know about how
students learn to read and write. This entire text has focused
on how students learn to read and write and construct meaning.
Clearly, we know assessment has not kept pace with our
knowledge about reading and writing. We know the two processes
are similar but different. We also know they develop together and
produce benefits that are attainable by neither one alone (Tierney
& Shanahan, 1991). And we know reading and writing are both
constructive processes. As we plan assessment tasks, we must
keep this knowledge in mind, incorporating new knowledge as it
becomes available.

Assessing literacy
People with low literacy often inadvertently give us clue that
can lead as to realization that they may have a reading or a
comprehension problem. Such clues include the following:

No even attempting to read printed materials

Asking to take PEMs home to discuss with significant other
Claiming that eyeglasses were left at home
Stating that they cannot read something because they are
too tired or they do not feel well.
Avoiding discussion of written material or not asking
questions about it.
Mouthing words as they try to read.
Although following clues may give you some leads as to a
persons literacy, and although that may be all you can do in
some situations, actually measuring literacy levels is a better
approach.
Two test are often used to measure patient literacy: the
REALM (Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine) and the
WRAT (Wide Range Achievement Test). Both tests measure the
basic reading skills of decoding words (recognizing letters that
form words and then pronouncing the words correctly). They do
not measure reading comprehension. Only two or three
minutes are needed to administer the tests, which makes clinic
use of the tools feasible. Some hospitals and clinics use REALM
and WRAT test routinely to assess reading ability of patients
and record the results in the patients chart.
The Realm is a reading test that requires patients to
pronounce common medical and anatomical words.
The test contains 66 words arranged in three columns in
ascending order of number of syllables and increasing
difficulty. To administer the test, perform the following:
1. Ask the patient to read the words aloud, starting at the top
of the first list and continuing through three list.
2. Allow the patient five seconds to pronounce each word.

3. If the patient gets stuck on a portion of the list, ask him or

her to look down each list to see if he or she can pronounce
any additional words.
4. Score the test by adding up the total number of words
pronounced correctly.
The WRAT 3 is the most recent version of the Wide Range
Achievement Test. In the reading portion of this test, patients
read aloud from a list of 42 words of increasing difficulty. The
examiner instructs the patient to pronounce each word and
checks off each word pronounced incorrectly. When 10
consecutive words are mispronounced, the test is stopped. The
administration manual shows how to convert the raw score to a
grade level score.