Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Data in schools: Why gathering reliable data is so important

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I'm not sure who is responsible for the headline, but it gives the appearance of conflasting validity with reliability. Lynch is writing about validity. Using a test designed foir summative evaluation as a pre-test, he says, is a case where the test isn't measuring what it is supposed to. So "Baseline testing is deeply flawed. It will damage children and schools," Lynch writes. "Giving an end-of-term summative assessment test at the beginning of the term before the children have covered the content, is using a test (summative assessment) against its purpose – it is not assessing what it is designed to do." Well, it is assessing math knowledge, but at a time when (presumably) students don't yet have that knowledge. That doesn't make it invalid.

p.s. for clarification, "Generally speaking, reliability means the extent to which 2 assessments of something are the same... Validity means the extent to which our inspections and judgements assess what they're supposed to. Both reliability and validity matter" (Finch, 2019).

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Nov 21, 2024 2:53 p.m.

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