For this week, you read abut curriculum based assessments and other informal measures. These assessments allow teachers to measure a student's growth over a period of time while using curriculum materials. However, do you think they are effective in measuring a student's growth? Also, describe the advantages and disadvantages to this method?
When thinking about curriculum based measurement, I think it is an effective measure of student's growth. I don't think that it should be the only method of student growth that we use though. The advantage of CBA is that you can chart the students growth on a weekly basis and see how they are coming. Also, you can use it in IEP meetings as evidence of your findings. The disadvantage of the CBA is that it could become a cubersome and something that might get pushed to the wayside and a teacher might give up on using. Also, the child could plateau at a level and not progress or the child could digress.
ReplyDeleteCBMs are effective because they serve both the teacher and the student. For the teacher, CBMs are useful when trying to understand why a student struggles in a particular struggle (ie trouble adding do they know number sequence). CBMs are helpful to the student becuase, if the teacher implements it correctly, the student can "view" their progress which encourages them to work harder. One advantage of this method is that it reduces teacher bias becuase it is based on curriculum and is not open to interpretation. The disadvantage is that, while it measures how well the student KNOWS what they are learning, a teacher cannot assess if the student is able to APPLY the knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI think that they are somewhat effective in measuring a student's growth. It really is dependent upon the student being tested and the quality of the assessments. Some students are bad testers, and may not respond well to actual tests. So there can be some difference in the score in two students even if they understand the same amount of information but react differently to a certain way of assessing. I think an advantage of this is being able to keep track of your students growth in some form or fashion. Having something to show where you students are, even if it may be a bit off, is better than being completely clueless.
ReplyDeleteI do think the are effective in measuring student's growth over time. I use curriculum based measures to monitor my student's progress on their IEP goals through out the school year since the are typically more specific to the child so it typically requires a teacher made assessment or something specific to the child's grade level. The advantages of CBM's are that they are typically very easy to create and very cheap! The already made CBM's are also typically easy to use and not very expensive. Some of the disadvantages are that sometimes they can be used out of context and can make the child seem more or less capable than they actually are.
ReplyDeleteIf there is adequate time for the teacher to assess the students correctly, then yes, curriculum based assessments, and others, can be effective. However, if the teacher is unable to consistently use curriculum based assessments, then the only information that may be useful is the projected growth the student should achieve. Because of time constraints, error when giving the assessments, or a student's performance on the day one of the assessments was given, then the information may not be accurate or useable to help the student in problem areas.
ReplyDeleteI think using curriculum based assessments can be a very good way to measure a students growth. One thing that you have to be careful about when using more informal assessments though is making sure the validity and reliability is good for everything you are using to judge growth from that student. You also have to make sure that you are not being biased in your judgement of a students work. So it is very important to make sure every assessment is measurable in some way I think using portfolio assessments is one of the best ways to judge a students growth because it is composed of lots of different types of assessments.
ReplyDeleteCurriculum based materials can be useful to check how much a student is learning. A teacher can use that to measure how the student is doing compared to other students systematically. This can provide useful information for IEPs. There are disadvantages though. Testing can only provide so much information about a student's progress and sometimes doesn't reveal the student's true understanding of the material. Testing can also sometimes get in the way of true learning. Some students do not test well or might take different things away from the lesson that might not be tested.
ReplyDeleteI do not think we should only use the curriculium based measurements. Not all students do well on this type of test. This type of test is good to show progress and student's growth. We should use a variety of assessments.
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