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ability: What one has learned over a period of time from both school and nonschool sources; one's general capability for performing tasks.
Achievement: What one has learned from formal instruction, usually in school.
Acuity: The physiological ability to receive sensory information.
Adaptive behavior: The ability to cope with the demands of the environment; includes self-help, communication, and social skills.
Advocacy: Clear expression of support for the rights of persons with disabilities and their families.
affective behaviors: Behaviors related to feelings, emotions, values, attitudes, interests, and personality; nonintellective behaviors.
Age score: Also called age equivalent; a score that translates test performance into an estimated age; reported in years and months.
Alternate score: A score resulting from the administration of standardized tests under altered conditions.
analytic scoring: Method of scoring essay items in which separate scores are given for specific aspects of the essay (e.g., organization, factual accuracy, spelling).
anecdotal record: A short, written report of an individual's behavior in a specific situation or circumstance.
Application skills: The ability to use reading, mathematics, and other academic skills in real-life situations.
Aptitude: One's capability for performing a particular task or skill; usually involves a narrower skill than ability (e.g., mathematics aptitude or foreign language aptitude).
Articulation: The production of the speech sounds or phonemes.
Assistive technology: Computers and other technologies used to enhance the performance of individuals with disabilities.
Assessment: A related series of measures used to determine a complex attribute of an individual or group of individuals. Generally has broader connotations than measurement. Often used as a stylistic alternative to measurement.
Attention: The selective narrowing or focusing on the relevant stimuli in a situation; a prerequisite for perception, memory, and all types of learning activities.
Bias: A situation in which assessment information produces results which give one group an advantage over other groups because of problems in the content, procedures, or interpretation of the assessment information; a distortion or misrepresentation of performance.
Basal: In test administration, the point at which it can be assumed that the student would receive full credit for all easier test items.
Bilingual education: The provision of special services to students whose primary language is not English; may include instruction in the primary language, training in English language skills, and development of multicultural awareness.
Ceiling: In test administration, the point at which it can be assumed that the student would receive no credit for all more difficult test items.
Checklist: A list of performance criteria for a particular activity or product on which an observer marks the pupil's performance on each criterion using a scale that has only two choices.
Classroom quiz: An informal assessment tool, usually designed by teachers, to assess students' classroom learning.
Clinical analysis: A method of interpretation of assessment results that considers student strengths and weaknesses and the interrelationships among the factors assessed.
Clinical interview: Asking a student questions about strategies used to perform a task as it is performed or immediately afterwards.
Cloze procedure: A technique for assessing reading skills in which words are omitted from a text and the student is asked to fill in the missing words.
Coaching: In test administration, the practice of helping the student arrive at answers.
Composition: Also called written expression; the written language in which writers produce connected text.
Comprehension skills: In reading, the ability to understand what is read; may be assessed via oral or silent reading.
Computation skills: In mathematics, the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as applied to whole numbers, fractions, and decimals.
Conferences: Formal meetings at which professionals and parents of students with disabilities discuss assessment results, eligibility, placement, program design, and other matters.
cognitive behaviors: Behaviors related to intellective processes like thinking, reasoning, memorizing, problem solving, analyzing, and applying.
Confidence interval: A range of scores in which it is likely that the student's true score will fall; constructed by means of the standard error of measurement.
Content related evidence - looks at how well the content of the test relates to what is being assessed. i.e. the questions, observations, etc.
Construct - related evidence of validity: used to establish whether a test measures a specified psychological construct, such as learned knowledge.
Construct related evidence - looks at whether the test matches the capabilities or psychological construct which it is trying to measure.
Continuous recording: An observational technique in which all of the student's behaviors are studied.
Correlation Coefficients: A positive or negative number within the range of .00 to 1.00. A correlation coefficient of .00 indicates no relationship and a coefficient of 1.00 indicates the highest possible relationship, which is sometimes called a perfect relationship. Correlations are usually somewhere between no relationship and a perfect relationship.
Criterion related evidence - correlation between the performance on the test with performance of relevant criterion not in the test.
Criterion-referenced: Describes an assessment that determines the quality of a pupil’s performance by comparing it to pre-established standards of mastery.
Criterion Referenced Interpretation: Pertain to the interpretation of performance. It means that a score is being interpreted in terms of the skills the test measures. It indicates what a student can and cannot do and compares a student’s performance with respect to a well defined content domain.
Criterion referenced interpretations of performance: refers to the frame of reference used to interpret performance on a test.
Criterion-referenced test: An informal assessment device that assesses skill mastery; compares the students performance to curricular standards.
Curriculum The skills, performances, attitudes, and values pupils are expected to learn from schooling: includes statements of desired pupil outcomes, descriptions of materials, and the planned sequence that will be used to help pupils attain the outcomes.
Curriculum-based assessment: Any informal assessment technique or procedure that evaluates the student's per-formance in relation to the standard school curriculum.
Curriculum-based measurement: A type of curriculum -based assessment characterized by frequent and direct measurement of critical school behaviors; often includes 1-minute timed samples of reading. math, and writing skills.
Data base management programs: Software programs used on computers for the management of information; allow the user to enter, store, edit, sort, and retrieve data.
Decoding: The process by which readers analyze a word in order to pronounce it; includes sight recognition, phonic analysis, structural analysis, and contextual analysis.
Demonstration: In test administration, tasks similar to test items that are used to teach test procedures to the student.
Developmental approach: An approach to assessment that focuses on stages of development and expectations based on age.
Diagnosis: The process of establishing the cause or causes of an illness or condition and prescribing appropriate treatment.
Diagnostic Evaluation: occur before or, more typically, during instruction, concerned with skills and other characteristics that are prerequisite to the current instruction, used to establish underlying causes for a student failing to learn a skill, try to anticipate conditions that will negatively affect learning, measures performance in skills not typically taught in the present classroom setting, based mostly on informal assessments, sometimes formal assessments and standardized tests are used.
Diagnostic probe: An informal technique in which a test task or instructional condition is altered in order to observe if a change in the student's performance results.
Diagnostic teaching: An informal assessment strategy in which two or more instructional conditions are compared to determine which is most effective.
Dialect: An alternate form of a language that differs in some way from the standard form.
Discrepancy analysis: The procedure in which scores are compared to determine whether they are significantly different; most often used to compare expected and actual achievement in the identification of learning disabilities.
Distractor: An incorrect option in a selection item.
Duration recording : An observational technique in which the length (or duration) of the target behavior is noted.
Ecological approach : An approach to assessment that focuses on the student's interaction with the environ-ment rather than on the deficits of the student.
Educate: Change the behavior of pupils; teach pupils to do things they could not previously do.
Education: The process designed to change pupils' behaviors in particular ways.
educational objective: A statement that describes a pupil's accomplishment that will result from instruction; the statement describes the behavior the pupil will learn to perform and the content on which it will be performed.
Error analysis: A type of work sample analysis in which the incorrect responses of the student are described and categorized.
Event recording: An observational technique in which the frequency of the target behavior is noted.
Evaluation: The outcome of measurement after value has been added. Combines our measures with other information to establish the desirability and importance of what we have observed.
Expressive language: The production of language for com-munication; for example, speaking and writing.
Family assessment: Assessment of child needs and char-acteristics likely to affect family functioning, parent-child interactions, family needs, critical events, and family strengths.
Fine motor skills: In motor development. the use of the small muscles of the body, especially in eye-hand coordination tasks.
First language: The language learned first by an individual; also called home language or native language.
Formal assessment: Assessment procedures that contain specific rules for administration, scoring, and interpretation; generally norm-referenced and/or standardized.
Formative Evaluation: occurs during instruction, establishes whether or not student has achieved sufficient mastery of skills, establishes whether further instruction is needed in specific areas, concerned with student’s attitudes, helps determine what adjustments to instruction are needed, based on continuous informal assessment.
Functional approach: An approach to assessment that focuses on skills needed for current tasks.
Grade: The symbol or number used by a teacher to represent a pupil's achievement in a subject area.
grade equivalent score: A standardized test score that describes a pupil's performance on a scale based on grade in school and month in grade; most commonly misinterpreted score; actually indicates pupil's level of performance relative to pupils in his or her own grade.
grading curve: Technique used in norm-referenced grading to indicate the proportion of pupils who will be given each of the possible grades.
grading system: The process by which a teacher arrives at the symbol or number that is used to represent a pupil's achievement in a subject area.
Gross motor skills : In motor development, the use of the large muscles of the body.
Group test: A test administered to more than one student at the same time.
high-inference indicator : Assessment information that is not directly related to tile characteristic being assessed; indirect evidence about a characteristic.
Higher level cognitive behaviors: Intellectual processes that are more complicated than simple memorization (e.g., problem solving, interpretation, analysis, and comprehension).
higher-level cognitive processes: See higher-level cognitive behaviors.
holistic scoring: Method of scoring essay items in which a single score is given to represent the overall quality of the essay across all dimensions.
Individual test: A test administered to one student at a time.
Individualized Assessment Plan: (lAP) A plan in which the steps and procedures of the assessment are organized according to the reasons for the assessment.
Individualized Education Program: (IEP) A written educational plan developed for each school-aged student eligible for special education.
Individualized Family Services Plan (IFSP) A written service plan mandated by PL 99-457 that describes the needs of infants and preschoolers and their families and specifies the goals to be achieved and services they will receive to achieve those goals.
Informal assessment Assessment procedures without rigid administration, scoring, and interpretation rules; includes criterion-referenced tests, task analysis, inventories, and so forth.
Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) An informal assessment device that measures both word recognition and comprehension skills; scores include Instructional, Independent, and Frustration reading levels.
Interindividual assessment Assessment that compares the performance of the student to the performance of others.
Interval The scale of measurement characterized by equl intervals between points in the scale.
Interview An informal assessment procedure in tester questions an informant.
Instruction : The methods and processes by which pupils' behaviors are changed.
instructional assessment: Collection, synthesis, and interpretation of information needed to make decisions about planning or carrying out instruction.
Intelligence The ability of an individual to understand and cope with the environment; generally assessed with intelligence or "10" tests that are measures of aptitude.
instructional objective: See educational objective.
interpretive exercise: Test item that contains a chart, passage, poem, or other material which the pupil must interpret in order to answer the questions posed.
Item: A single question or problem on an assessment instrument.
inconsistency: lacking in harmony between the different parts or elements; self-contradictory.
(K)
Key A list of correct answers for a test.
Language proficiency: The degree to which an individual is skilled in a language; when students speak languages other than English, proficiency is assessed to determine the primary language.
Language sample: A sample of oral language used for analysis.
Latency: In test administration, the amount of time between presentation of the test question and the student's response.
Learning aptitude: The capacity for altering one's behavior when presented with new information; the ability to learn; generally measured by tests of intellectual performance and adaptive behavior.
Learning environment: The instructional, interpersonal, and physical characteristics of the classroom which may influence student performance.
Learning strategies: Methods used by individuals in their interactions with learning tasks.
Least restrictive environment: According to PL 94-142, the educational placement for students with disabilities that is as close to the regular classroom as feasible.
local norms: Test norms that describe a pupil's performance in comparison to pupils in his or her class, school, or city.
low-inference indicator: Assessment information that provides direct evidence about a pupil behavior of interest (e.g., a teacher watches a pupil tie his or her shoe rather than asking the pupil to describe how he or she would tie a shoe).
lower-level cognitive behaviors: Intellectual processes that involve only memorization (e.g., reciting number facts, writing spelling words, stating a poem from memory).
lower-level cognitive processes: See lower-level cognitive behaviors.
Mainstreaming : Integration of students with disabilities physically, academically, and socially with age peers.
Maximum Performance: Establish a student’s ability to perform when motivated, but these measures do not necessarily generalize to other settings. Tend to be encouraged through formal assessments, such as written tests, structured performance assessments, and graded homework.
Mean : The arithmetic average; a measure of central ten-dency.
Measurement: Determining the characteristics of something, regulation through the use of a standard, and making comparisons to a reference such as the performance of others.
Median: The middle score in a distribution of scores; a measure of central tendency.
Memory: The ability to retrieve previously learned information.
Mild disabilities: The disabilities of mild mental retardation, learning disabilities, and emotional disturbance (behavior disorders); considered mild in relation to more severe disabilities.
Miscue: A decoding error in reading.
Mode: The most common score; a measure of central tendency.
Morphology: The study of morphemes, or the smallest meaningful units of language.
Motor skills: Skills using the small and large muscles of the body; includes fine and gross motor skills.
Nominal: The scale of measurement in which data are sorted into categories.
Nondiscriminatory assessment: Assessment that does not penalize students for their sex, native language, race, culture, or disability.
Normal curve equivalent: A normalized standard score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 20.06; has the same range and midpoint as percentile rank scores but is an equal interval scale.
Norm-referenced test: A test that compares a student's performance to that of the students in the norm group.
Norm-Referenced Interpretation: Pertain to the interpretation of performance. Involves comparing a student’s performance to that of other students
Norms: A set of scores that describes the performance of a specific group of Pupils, usually a national sample at a particular grade level, on a task or test; these scores are used to interpret scores of other pupils who perform the same task or take the same test.
norm group: The group of pupils who were tested to produce the norms for a test.
norm-referenced: Describes an assessment that determines the quality of a pupil's performance by comparing it to the performance of other pupils.
objective scoring: Different scorers or raters will independently arrive at the same scores or rating for a pupil's performance.
Observation: An informal assessment technique that involves specifying, counting, and recording student behaviors.
official assessments: Assessments teachers are required to carry out to fulfill their official, bureaucratic decision-making responsibilities, such as grading, grouping, placing, and promoting pupils.
Options: Choices available to select from in a multiple-choice item on a test.
Oral language: The reception and expression of the pragmatic, semantic, syntactical, morphological, and phonological aspects of language; involves listening and speaking.
Ordinal: The scale of measurement in which data are arranged in rank order.
percentile band: The range of percentile ranks in which a pupil would be expected to fall on repeated testing; a way to indicate the error in scores to avoid overinterpretation of results.
Perception: The psychological ability to process or use information received through the sense organs.
percentile rank: A standardized test score that describes the percentage of pupils a given pupil scored higher than; 89th percentile rank means that a pupil scored higher than 89 percent of the pupils in the norm group.
performance assessment: Formal assessment in which one observes and judges a pupil's skill in carrying out a physical activity (e.g., giving an oral speech) or producing a product (e.g., building a birdhouse).
performance criteria: The observable aspects of a performance or product that are observed and judged) performance assessment.
performance standards: The levels of achievement pupils must reach to receive particular grades in a criterion-referenced grading system (e.g., higher than 90 receives an A, between 80 and 89 receives a B, etc.).
Phonology: Study of phonemes or speech sounds, the smallest units of oral language.
Portfolio assessment: The analysis of student work samples, self-evaluations, and other materials assembled in portfolios to document student progress over time.
Pragmatics: Study of the use of language for communication.
Primary language: The language in which an individual is most proficient; also called dominant language.
Problem-solving skills: In mathematics, the use of computational skills to solve a problem; usually assessed via word problems.
Profile: A graph upon which scores are plotted.
Proportional interaction: Students with and without disabilities receiving the teacher's attention for appropriate behavior on a consistent enough basis to maintain performance.
Protocol: The test form or student answer booklet.
Preliminary Evaluation: occurs during the first days of school, provides a basis for expectations during the school year, based on the teacher’s informal observations and oral questions, looks at the students skills, attitudes, physical characteristics, etc. These evaluations tend to happen naturally.
premise: The stem in a matching test item; statement a pupil must match with a response.
primacy effect: Tendency of initial impressions to remain stable over time.
psychomotor behaviors: Behaviors related to the performance of physical and manipulative activities such as holding a pencil, buttoning buttons, serving a tennis ball, playing the piano, and cutting with scissors.
Questionnaire: An informal assessment device in which the informant reads questions and writes the answers.
Range: A descriptive statistic that expresses the spread of a distribution.
rating scale: A written list of performance criteria associated with a particular activity or product in which an observer marks the pupil's performance on each criterion in terms of its quality using a scale that has more than two choices.
Ratio: The scale of measurement characterized by equal intervals between points in the scale and a true zero.
raw score: The number of items or total score a pupil obtained on an assessment.
Readability: A measure of the ease with which a text can be read; usually expressed as a grade level.
Receptive language: The processing of language, as in listening and reading.
Related services: Special services that students with dis-abilities may need to benefit from special education; includes transportation, speech pathology and audiology, and counseling.
Reliability - The degree to which a test is measuring something consistantly has to do with whether or not testing and other means of assessment are consistent, and the degree to which they are consistent.
response: The choices that must be matched to premises in a matching item.
Response analysis: A type of work sample analysis in which both errors and correct responses are considered.
Scatterplots: A system of plotting scores of a number of students on a grid, in order to compare and find the relationship between different scores.
Self-fulfilling prophesy: Process in which teachers form perceptions about pupil characteristics, treat pupils as if the perceptions are correct, and pupils respond as if they actually have the characteristics even though they might not originally have had them; an expectation becomes a reality.
selection item: Test item in which the pupil responds by selecting the answer from choices given; multiple choice, true-false, and matching items.
Semantics: The aspect of language that deals with meaning, concepts, and vocabulary.
Sequence: analysis An observational technique in which the antecedents and consequences of the student's behaviors are studied.
Service delivery models: A continuum of special education arrangements through which students with disabilities receive services.
sizing up assessment: Assessments used by teachers in the first weeks of school to get to know pupils so that they can be organized into a classroom society with rules, communication, and control.
Sociometric technique: An assessment procedure used to determine how students perceive their peers.
Special education: Specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs of students with disabilities.
specific determiner: A word that provides a clue to the answer of a true-false question (e.g., always, never, some, sometimes, etc.).
Specific learning abilities: Readiness skills such as attention, perception, and memory.
Standard deviation: A descriptive statistic that expresses the amount of variability within a set of scores.
Standard error of difference between scores: A statistic used to estimate whether an observed difference between scores is a true difference.
standardized assessment instrument: An assessment instrument designed to be administered, scored, and interpreted in the same way no matter when and where it is administered.
Standard score: A derived score with a set mean and standard deviation; examples are IQ scores, scaled scores, and T-scores.
Standardization sample: The group used to establish scores on norm-referenced tests.
Standardized test: A test in which the administration, scoring, and interpretation procedures are standard or set; usually norm-referenced.
Stanine: A standardized test score that describes pupil performance on a nine-point scale ranging from I to 9; scores of 1, 2, and 3 are often interpreted as being below average; 4, 5, and 6 as being average; and 7, 8, and 9 as being above average.
Statistical analysis: Involves computing test scores, identifying the important scores for interpretation, and arranging scores on a profile.
Structural task analysis: A type of task analysis in which the performance demands of the task (e.g., speed and accuracy requirements) are studied.
Stem: The part of a multiple choice item that states the question to be answered.
subjective scoring: Different scorers or raters will not agree on a pupil's score or rating; independent scorers produce different scores or ratings for a pupil.
Subtest: A set of items administered and scored as a separate portion of a longer, more comprehensive test.
supply item: Test item to which the pupil responds by writing or constructing his or her own answer; short answer, completion, essay.
Summative Evaluation: occurs at the conclusion of instruction: end of unit and end of year, used to certify student achievements, used to assign end- of-term grades, used as the basis for promoting or sometimes grouping students, help determine whether teaching procedures should be changes before next year, summative assessments are based on formal assessment.
Summative evaluation: Evaluation done at the end of a program to determine its effectiveness.
Surrogate parent: A person assigned by the state to represent a person with a disability if the parents cannot be identified, if the parents are unknown, or if the person is a ward of the state.
Syntax: The grammatical structure of language.
Task analysis: An informal assessment technique in which a task is broken into its essential components or subtasks.
Team approach: An approach to assessment that requires the active involvement of professionals from many fields, parents, perhaps the person with a disability, and other interested parties.
Taxonomy: A classification system.
Test: A formal, systematic procedure for obtaining a sample of pupils' behavior; the results of a test are used to make generalizations about how pupils would have performed on similar but untested behaviors.
test battery: A group of subtests each assessing a different subject area but all normed on the same sample and designed to be administered to the same group of test takers.
Tester: One who administers and scores tests. Test-scoring programs Software programs used on computers to assist in scoring tests.
test form: Identifies the version of the test being used for standardized tests which have more than one equivalent version or form.
test level: Identifies the grade level(s) for which a standardized test is intended. test norms See norms.
Testwiseness: The ability of a test taker to identify flaws in items that give away the correct answers; skill at taking tests and outwitting poor item writers.
Time-sample recording: An observational technique in which it is noted whether the target behavior occurs at some time within a specified time interval; used with nondiscrete behaviors.
Transition: The movement from one environment or service system to another; for example, the movement from school-based special education services to postsecondary education or vocational training options.
Typical Performance: more concerned with attitudes than academic skills, usually measured by informal assessments, particularly observation.
(V)
Validity: The extent to which assessment information is appropriate for making the desired decision about pupils, instruction, or classroom climate; the degree to which assessment information permits correct interpretations of the desired kind; the most important characteristic of assessment information.
Word processors: Software programs used on computers for writing; allow the writer to enter, store, edit, and retrieve text.
Work sample: A permanent product produced by the student (e.g., a homework assignment, test paper, or composition).
Work sample analysis: An informal assessment technique in which samples of student work are studied.
Writing: Expressive written language; includes spelling, handwriting, usage, and composition.
Writing sample: A sample of the written language produced by the student that is used for analysis.
Written language: Includes the receptive skill, reading, and the expressive skill, writing.
(Y)
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