[NIFL-ASSESSMENT:549] stakeholder needs

From: Eileen Eckert (eileeneckert@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed May 12 2004 - 18:24:20 EDT


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From: "Eileen Eckert" <eileeneckert@hotmail.com>
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Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:549] stakeholder needs
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Part 2 of my reply to Marie:

I said, I guess the question is, what information do we need to get from the
>assessments we use?

Marie replied: Is this the place that we should start at?  Will the answer 
to this question be the same for all the different stakeholders?  What do 
funders need to know?  How about teachers?  How about the students 
themselves?  And program leadership too - what do they want/need to know?

If the assessment we use depends on what information we need to get, then 
that should be the starting point for creating or choosing assessments.

Will the answer to this question be the same for all the different 
stakeholders? Probably not always (it isn't now), but which stakeholders 
have priority? As it is now, whoever the stakeholder is in the 
accountability movement is <the> primary stakeholder, and that's not even 
clearly defined(ostensibly "the taxpayers", but who's the proxy 
stakeholder--whoever wants to put adult ed on the chopping block this time?)

As it is, we try to find instructional and program improvement applications 
in data that has been collected for accountability purposes. I think that's 
backward. We should be able to demonstrate effectiveness and results 
(accountability) with evidence/data collected for the primary purpose of 
improving instruction and programming. Students should be our primary 
stakeholders. Are they now?

Eileen


From: "Marie Cora" <mariecora@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: nifl-assessment@nifl.gov
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-assessment@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-ASSESSMENT:543] RE: To Standardize or Not To Standardize
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 10:54:59 -0400 (EDT)

Hi all,

Ok, so we have a few questions and comments from Eileen then:  anyone with 
more psychometric background than I is HEARTILY welcomed to respond!!! :)

1.  What is the "right" thing (or things) to standardize?  How do you 
determine what those things might be?

2.  Eileen writes:  >If you decide that certain characteristics of 
performance are
>important, then those become the criteria against which you can judge lots 
>of different examples of work. For example, if my faculty group thinks it 
>is important that students write with an awareness of the intended 
>audience, then we can make that a criterion, describe it at different 
>levels, and use it to evaluate performance on emails, postings to the 
>discussion board of the online component of our classes, homework, essays, 
>a copy of the note the student wrote to her child's teacher, etc., etc. We 
>can use real-life writing to assess how well the student meets this 
>criterion, and we don't have to standardize conditions to do so.

My question:  haven't you just described (part of) a process for 
standardizing the conditions of "awareness of intended audience"?  If not, 
why not?  If yes, why?

**Jump in anyone on the list - I'm not posing this question only to Eileen - 
you all must have opinions - and if there are test developers, 
psychometricians reading, what do you think about this?

3.  >

marie cora
NIFL Assessment List Moderator



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