Typical Tools Used For Educational Assessment

Nowadays, there are thousands of assessment instruments used. The ones chosen will primarily depend on the objective of an evaluation. Achievement or educational assessments are the most common ones in school settings. These measure a learner's current academic competence level. An educational assessment will pinpoint students who need special attention, assist in picking the best approach to instruction, and rule out learning disabilities. The following are the tools used in this evaluation to generate a clear picture of the learner's abilities.

Academic Achievement Tools

These are designed to measure a student's academic weaknesses and strengths. They consider proficiency in academic areas like language, written expression, math, and reading. The results of academic achievement tools generally serve as the baselines for measuring the efficacy of educational programs. The typical academic achievement tools include WIAT-II, WJ-II ACH, and KTEA-II.

Information Processing Tools

These evaluate how a learner's brain will process and integrate information. The primary components of information processing tools include auditory and visual processing, attention, fluid reasoning, long-term retrieval, and short-term memory. These educational assessment tools also consider a student's processing speeds, meta cognitive skills, phonemic awareness, and fluid reasoning. The most common tools used by psychologists are WJ-III COG and WISC-IV IN.

Informal Assessment Tools

These are used to select or create the appropriate curriculum for a learner or prescribe academic therapies based on his/her weakness and strength. Some of the approaches used in this educational assessment include developmental spelling evaluations, writing samples, and informal reading inventories. The reading inventories, for instance, measure a student's vocabulary, comprehension, and reading rate.

Assessing a student's achievement levels using the above tests is not preserved for those with signs of a learning disability or schools. Even parents should get them for their kids. This way, they are well-placed to understand their children's educational strengths and weaknesses and support them.