Brookhart (2009) has devoted her article to multiple measures as one of the best ways to evaluate students’ knowledge. Having considered the article, it may be concluded that there are a lot of advantages Brookhart (2009) sees in multiple measures of students’ knowledge. Multiple measures allow teachers to make meaningful and useful conclusions of students’ achievements on the basis of clean understanding of students’ performance in different types of works. Teachers consider students’ abilities from different angles that allow them logically analyze the information and make correct conclusions about students’ level of skills and knowledge (Brookhart 2009).
Reading McMillan (2011), it is possible to consider a number of different types of assessments which correspond to some specific standards. Standard is considered to be a list of features devoted to “what students should know and be able to do” (McMillan, 2011, p. 32). Ardovino, Hollingsworth and Ybarra (2000) state that using multiple measures, teachers get both challenges which “involve the development of skills necessary to select assessments which are technically sound and which authentically reflect each student’s learning” and the opportunities which “involve the determination of which assessments measure high-quality learning based upon high-standards” (p. 13).
Being reliable, multiple measures also have standard error of measurement. The misinformation students bring to their examinations may be unpredictable, so each case should be considered separately, if serious decision should be made (Burton, 2004, p. 593). McMillan (2011) is sure that there can be informal formative assessment which occurs every day between teachers and students as a result of their interaction.
I absolutely agree with the statement provided by Brookhart (2009) that multiple measures should be used in classroom assessment, as it is impossible to understand the students’ level of knowledge only by means of listening or reading skills separately. Other types of students’ comprehension should be measured to see the whole picture. The lack of understanding of students’ knowledge may lead to wrong judgment, one of the main mistakes teachers want to eliminate in their work. Offering at last three different concepts of multiple measuring, (1) “measures of different constructs”, (2) “different measures of the same construct”, and (3) “multiple opportunities to pass the same test” (Brookhart, 2009), the author of the article wants to deliver an idea that there are a lot of different variants of how multiple measures may be combined and used.
In conclusion, it should be stated that multiple measurement is considered to be one of the most adequate, reasonable and fear means of assessing students’ knowledge. Using this system in practice, teachers are going to succeed in understanding students’ general development, their ability to use considered knowledge in life, but not only in the classroom.
Reference List
Ardovino, J., Hollingsworth, J., & Ybarra, S. (2000). Multiple measures: accurate ways to assess student achievement. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Brookhart, S. M. (2009). “The Many Meanings of “Multiple Measures””. Educational Leadership. 67(3), 6-12.
Burton, R. F. (2004). Multiple choice and true/false tests: reliability measures and some implications of negative marking. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29(5), 585-595.
McMillan, J. H. (2011). Classroom Assessment Principles and Practice for Effective Standards-Based Instruction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.