Formal Assessments
Formal assessment includes; screening assessments, diagnostic assessments, and norm-referenced assessments. Screening assessments usually engage the whole class or a group to represent the whole class. Screening assessment applies to an individual where an assessment test analyzes the individuals’ specific data. The individual screening assessment applied in early childhood unearths various issues a child encounters at early stages. Screening assessment is useful when applied at the beginning of the year; it identifies students experiencing problems. Timing and correct content of screening meet the needs of children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Guzzetti, 2005).
McKenna and Walpole (2005) affirm that correct benchmark scores help identify weaker students among the groups in a class. Secondly, a norm-referenced assessment compares the performance of a student to that of a referenced group. Test designers assign tests to a group of normal populations to identify performance norms. Norm-referenced assessment forms the basis of ranking and comparing students with others. Thirdly, for intervention planning and educational programming, diagnostic assessments help to provide information about the nature and the extent of reading problems. Reading diagnosis involves an analysis of the process in which a student benefits through meaning, enjoyment, value, and significance from printed materials or sources.
Methods of delivering information to the students would improve as the various planning and programming strategies addresses the key areas that help the weaker students to catch up with the whole class. Screening helps improve performance when carried out at the beginning of the year because of the weaknesses that every student shows get addressed through the implementation of strategies that favor such student improvement.
This assessment provides a good way that helps evaluate the laid down procedures and strategies before implementation. Information from the screening assessment generates adjustments that address the various needs of the students (Guzzetti, 2005).
Screening assessment is cost-effective where materials and the process itself use fewer resources. The material and process used falls within the educational program. The diagnostic assessment helps to provide the required information about the nature and the extent of reading problems. Thus, teaching programs and methods would focus on reducing or handling such problems, to improve the welfare of the students and their performance. The norm-referenced assessment has the capability of raising students’ general performance through the comparison of results from time to time. It makes students comfortable and acts as the driving force for students to associate with others who perform better an effort that boosts education levels.
Various disadvantages associated with screening as a form of assessment process include; screening assessment base on set benchmarks that do not reflect the reality on the ground about the students’ performance. The benchmarks set by the federal government may not meet the requirements of the students, because the set standards or benchmarks may be too low to analyze the needs of students. Screening is associated with poor timing as the process involves the federal government follow-ups. Further, diagnostic assessment proves to be costly because of the number of materials and resources required, and secondly, it is time-consuming and may take more time before the realization of any positive results (McKenna & Walpole, 2005).
Informal Assessments
Ruiz-Primo and Furtak’s (2004) report shows that informal reading inventory involves the use of graded reading passages as an assessing tool for children. The accuracy and reading rate helps in grading the students. Running records involves the recording of errors and self-corrections made by children. This is used for calculating error rate and self-correction rate. Student self-assessment involves the setting of targets and goals by the student, the goals fall within the schedule of the student. A parent interview is an effort made by the parent to examine the child for language and reading problems.
Informal reading inventory is less time consuming and the set target could be achieved in a short period because the results are received faster and analyzing them takes little time. The faster way of getting results from reading inventory helps in strategic planning of teaching programs as less amount of time would necessitate assimilation of good decisions into the teaching programs. The running record is accurate and addresses the exact problems.
Here, the errors made by the students are the ones concentrated on. The speed of carrying out the process is high leading to more improvement procedures early enough to address children’s problems. Considering parent interviews, it is clear that the parent spends more time with the child he/she has all information concerning the child’s development. The assessment process that the parent engages in requires less or no amount of money in terms of costs to carry out the process. Student self-assessment is advantageous because the targets and the goals that the student sets act as a motivating factor for them to work so that they may achieve.
Secondly, the assessment process falls within the student schedules therefore students have no pressure to follow up the program. On the contrary, informal reading inventory addresses reading problems only, and other associated problems like how to make the students enjoy or gain meaning from the classwork are not catered for well. Besides, reading inventory does not provide a clear-cut connection or framework for curriculum use and strategic planning of activities in the day-to-day running of teaching programs in schools.
Running record does not address other problems, for instance, the causes behind the student error making, other background information that could help improve the performance of the students. Running records has no clear way of differentiating the real errors that the student regularly makes and the other errors due to nervousness or sickness. Thus, this assessment may give misleading results at the end (Cole, 1999).
References
Cole, K. A. (1999). Walking around: Getting more from informal assessment. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 4 (4), 224-227.
Guzzetti, B. (2005). Literacy in America: An encyclopedia of history, theory and practice. New York, NY: ABC-CLIO.
McKenna, M.C. & Walpole, S. (2005). How well does assessment inform our reading instruction? The Reading Teacher, 59 (1), 84-86.
Ruiz-Primo, M. A. &Furtak, E. M. (2004). Informal formative assessment of students’ understanding of scientific inquiry. Stanford: Stanford University.