Teacher judgments of student learning are a key element in performance assessment. This study examines aspects of the validity of teacher judgments that are based on the Work Sampling System (WSS), a curriculum-embedded, performance assessment for preschool (age 3) to Grade 5. The purpose of the study is to determine if teacher judgments about student learning in kindergarten to third grade are trustworthy if they are informed by a curriculum-embedded performance assessment. A cross-sectional sample composed of 345 K-3 students enrolled in 17 classrooms in an urban school system was studied. Analyses included correlations between WSS and an individually administered psychoeducational battery, four-step hierarchical regressions to examine the variance in students’ spring outcome scores, and receiver-operating-characteristics (ROC) curves to compare the accuracy of WSS in categorizing students in terms of the outcome. Results demonstrate that WSS correlates well with a standardized, individually administered psychoeducational battery; that it is a reliable predictor of achievement ratings in K-3; and that the data obtained from WSS have significant utility for discriminating accurately between children who are at risk (e.g., Title I) and those who are not at risk. Further discussion concerns the role of teacher judgment in assessing student learning and achievement.
The assessment of children's social skills is an important task for school psychologists in both applied and research settings. The present study examines the psychometric properties of parent ratings of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), in kindergarten through third grades, testing for measurement differences between boys and girls, between African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic children, and across time from kindergarten through third grades. The analyses used a longitudinal sample of 4345 children from over 600 schools in 30 states to examine these questions using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Results provide qualified support for the use of the SSRS for kindergarten through 3rd-grade students across these different populations. However, if scored according to the manual, these results indicate that the measure may not be assessing the same construct over time or for all ethnic groups. If corrections to the factor structure and scoring system are incorporated, these results provide a basis for using parent ratings of the SSRS to assess social skills and problem behaviors across time, ethnicity, and sex in early elementary school.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.