New CRESST Report Evaluates Measurement Error

Measuring school and classroom environments has become central in recent efforts to evaluate teacher quality and effectiveness.

In this latest CRESST report, Jonathan Schweig  compares four widely used approaches to account for measurement error when used to measure school quality outcomes. 

Discover here what he found out. 

CRESST to Share Research at June Assessment Conference

Eva Baker, Joan Herman, and Margaret Heritage will share their assessment knowledge and research at the upcoming National Conference on Student Assessment sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers, June 19-22 in National Harbor, Maryland. Topics range from formative assessment that prepares students for the Common Core State Standards to blending assessment with instruction. Links to the CRESST presentations are below:

Eva Baker

Joan Herman 

Margaret Heritage

UCLA Hosts Symposium on the Gordon Commission Reports

Twelve distinguished educators will speak  at the June 12th CRESST Distinguished Scholar Colloquium, from 12:30 - 4:30 p.m. at UCLA De Neve Plaza. The event features the Gordon Commission Reports which call for a change in the current high-stakes use of standardized tests to new assessments that help teachers improve instruction that supports student learning. 

Among the noted speakers are Edmund W. Gordon, Eva L. Baker, Edward Haertel, Charlene Rivera, Carl Cohn, Karen Symms Gallagher, Li Cai, Norma Silva, Louis Gomez, Joan L. Herman, Tony Alpert, and Allison Jones. Alpert and Jones represent the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) respectively. 

A full agenda and news release are available. RSVP to carpio@cse.ucla.edu.

CRESST Co-Director Li Cai at Beijing Normal University

More than 100 faculty and students from across China recently attended a short Item Response Theory course taught by CRESST Co-director Li Cai.

Organized by the Center for National Assessment of Education Quality (NAEQ), the course was co-sponsored by Beijing Normal University, East China Normal University (Shanghai) and the Institute of Education Sciences of China. 

A link in Chinese is available on the NAEQ web site. 

Is Gaming the Future of Assessment?

CRESST Senior Researcher Girlie Delacruz recently helped reporters at the annual Education Writers Association meeting understand some of the important aspects of designing games for learning and assessment. 

Among the advantages of games is that they can be a useful data source, said Delacruz. 

Find out more in Dr. Delacruz's presentation: Designing Games for Learning and Assessment: Help Me…Help You!

CRESST Working on New Methods for Essay Scoring

Common Core assessments represent a major need for improved scoring of short essays and constructed response questions, which can be time-consuming and expensive to grade. 

CRESST researchers are using deep natural language processing techniques to automatically score essays as one possible solution with some favorable results.

Learn more in this poster presented by Deirdre Kerr, Hamid Mousavi  and Markus Iseli at the recent American Educational Research Association meeting.  

Newsday Quotes Joan Herman on Computer-Based Testing

With the advent of computerized testing across the United States, some school districts are unhappy about the added costs to upgrade their schools' technology systems. But CRESST Senior Research Scientist Joan Herman, in a recent Newsday article, says that current multiple choice and short answer tests "cannot get at divergent thinking or a student's ability to actually communicate."

She argues that the forthcoming computer-driven Smarter Balanced and PARCC assessments will allow students to "show what they are thinking," and help to measure the rigorous requrements of the Common Core State Standards, now adopted by 45 states. 

Read the complete article, LI School Officials Wary of Computer-Based Testing Plan.    

Formative Assessment Can Improve Learning

In a recent presentation to the American Educational Research Association, CRESST Senior Researcher Yunyun Dai discussed findings from a CRESST study showing that well designed formative assessments can lead to improved student learning in science. 

Dr. Dai's presentation is available as well as a related CRESST report. 

Distinguished Scholar Colloquium Features James Pellegrino

The May 22, 2013 CRESST Distinguished Scholar Colloquium will feature University of Illinois at Chicago's Distinguished Professor James Pellegrino, one of the nation's foremost education researchers.  

A lifetime member of the National Academy of Education and co-chair of the Committee on Developing Assessments of Science Proficiency in K-12, Dr. Pellegrino will present "Proficiency in Science: Assessment Challenges and Opportunities." 

The special presentation will take place in the Reading Room of UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at 12:30 p.m.. To attend please contact Candice Carpio. The presentation is open to all. 

Learning from Video Game Data

Video games are being used at a growing rate to support learning in the classroom. But what can researchers learn from player interaction data?

In a recent four-hour training course sponsored by the National Council on Measurement in Education, CRESST researchers Greg Chung, Rebecca Buschang, Deirdre Kerr, and Danny Parks shared their knowledge of how researchers can use video games to measure student learning. 

Both a PowerPoint and a course syllabus are available.