Assessment of mathematics and reading performance: An examination of the correspondence between direct assessment of student performance and teacher report

Abstract

Teacher judgments have been identified as a primary source of information regarding student academic achievement. Research examining the accuracy of teachers' judgments in assessing students' academic abilities has shown relatively high accuracy. However, previous studies have relied primarily on norm-referenced measures to obtain estimates of students' achievement in reading and mathematics. Recent developments in the assessment of students' academic skills, such as Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM), provide a direct estimate of students' skill levels in basic areas such as reading and mathematics. The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which teachers' perceptions of students' reading and mathematics skills corresponded to direct estimates of students' reading and mathematics skills. Two second-grade teachers estimated the reading and mathematics skills of 33 second-grade students. Results of this study indicated that teachers were not accurate in assessing their students' mathematics functioning. Teachers were more accurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery mathematics levels in basic addition, but were very inaccurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery, Instructional, or Frustrational mathematics levels in all other skills assessed. In reading, teachers' judgment accuracy varied as a function of grade-level material and instructional level. Specifically, teachers experienced considerable difficulty accurately identifying students who were reading at a Mastery level in grade-level or above-grade-level material.

Does immigration background matter? How teachers’ predictions of students’ performance relate to student background

“…Research has shown that teacher expectations can serve as self-fulfilling prophecies (Eckert, Dunn, Codding, Begeny, & Kleinmann, 2006;Jussim, Eccles, & Madon, 1996;Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968) and that low teacher expectations can undermine students' academic performance (Schofield, 2006). Students from socially stigmatized groups that fare less well in school may be especially vulnerable to the negative effects of teacher expectations (Jussim & Harber, 2005).…”

University teacher judgments in problem-based learning: Their accuracy and reasoning

“…Teachers judge students' performance or behavior (Südkamp, Kaiser, & Möller, 2012) for diverse purposes, such as formal assessment, referral decisions (e.g., remedial teaching or acceleration), and instructional decisions (e.g., selection of tasks, determining difficulty levels, and organization of learning; Abidin & Robinson, 2002;Begeny, Eckert, Montarello, & Storie, ACCURACY AND REASONING OF TEACHER JUDGMENTS 4 2008;Eckert, Dunn, Codding, Begeny, & Kleinmann, 2006;Gerber & Semmel, 1984;Südkamp et al, 2012). It therefore is important to judge students in an accurate way.…”

Utilizing Teacher Ratings of Student Literacy to Identify At-Risk Students: an Analysis of Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

“…Studies using more direct methods of teacher ratings specific to reading have demonstrated that teachers are moderately accurate in identifying children who may be at-risk for academic problems (Bates and Nettlebeck 2001;Eckert et al 2006;Flynn and Rabbar 1998;Hoge and Coladarci 1989;Madelaine and Wheldall 2005;Taylor et al 2000;Teisl et al 2001). A typical way of evaluating the accuracy of teacher judgments has been to compare the teacher rating of a student with the performance of that student on a test with established reliability and validity.…”