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Finding Out What Your Child Knows > Educational Jargon Defined |
Educational Jargon Defined |
| School reform: A generic term
encompassing all kinds of efforts underway to improve schools. Reform
efforts focus on all aspects of schooling, from how schools are governed
to what curriculum is taught in the classroom. Curriculum: The subject matter a teacher presents to students. Instruction: The ways in which a teacher teaches in the classroom. Assessment: All of the many different ways (such as a written test, a portfolio of student work, an experiment, or teacher observation) that seek to measure a student's skills or knowledge in a subject area. Assessment can be either formal (students know it's a test) or informal (providing ongoing information to the teacher). Performance-based assessment: Assessment tasks that require students to perform hands-on tasks, such as writing an essay or conducting a science experiment. Such assessments are becoming increasingly common as alternatives to multiple-choice, machine-scored tests. This is also known as authentic assessment. Alternative assessment: Any form of measuring what students know and are able to do, other than traditional standardized tests. Alternative forms of assessment include portfolios, performance-based assessments, and other means of testing students. Authentic assessment: See performance-based assessment, above. Standardized tests: These are general achievement tests designed to measure how well a student has learned basic knowledge and skills taught in schools, in such areas as reading and mathematics. Popular standardized tests include: the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS), and the Stanford Achievement Test Series (SAT-8, SAT-9, etc.the number refers to which test it is in the series). IQ test: IQ is shorthand for "intelligence quotient," which is considered to be a person's mental capacity. IQ tests have become increasingly controversial because critics claim they measure only a narrow band of intellectual strengths, primarily "school smarts." Others feel that the tests are biased against members of some minority groups or are problematic in other ways. Norm-referenced scoring: When tests are scored by comparing one student's work with other students' work. Criterion-reference scoring: When tests are scored by comparing students' work with specific criteria or standards. Rubric: A scoring guide for a test or other assessment task. Standards: "Content" standards are subject-matter benchmarks designed to guide what students learn and when they should learn it. Most agree that the academic standards of public schools need to be raised--however there's national debate over how to implement such standards, how prescriptive they should be, and whether they should be national or local, and voluntary or required. Standards-based reform: A situation in which standards drive reform at a school, such as when a school's assessment, curriculum, and instruction are aligned with standards. |
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