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NZCER Blogs
A number of NZCER staff contribute to our blogs and we link to and draw on external expertise. We hope it is a useful source of information, ideas and support about NZCER's research, tools and wider educational and assessment issues. We welcome your questions and comments.
Please refer to the NZCER community guidelines for participation on NZCER blog posts.
Read rest of post: Assessment on the go - gathering assessment data while you're teaching
Date posted: 19 September 2013
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Recently, there has been some public debate about the 2012 National Standards results, how these stack up against the results from 2011, and what they mean. But interpreting National Standards results is difficult and the debate sometimes lacks depth.
Read rest of post: Interpreting aggregated National Standards data: a thought experiment
Date posted: 6 August 2013
In an article in the latest edition of SET Research information for Teachers, we explain how the norms used in the standardised reading test, STAR, can be checked and double-checked as more students use the assessment.
Read rest of post: Checking the STAR norms
Date posted: 9 July 2013
In the previous posting, we talked about the importance of choosing the correct conversion table for reporting standardised test results as stanines. Here we explore some examples. What happens if you choose to use the current year level table when testing at the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year?
Read rest of post: More on calculating correct stanines (with examples)
Date posted: 4 July 2013
When reporting data from NZCER standardised tests using stanines, you need to think about:
Read rest of post: Calculating correct stanines when testing at different times of the year
Date posted: 10 April 2013
The original development of the STAR (Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading) Test was carried out for NZCER by Dr Warwick Elley, now Emeritus Professor of Education. He also led the team that revised the test in 2010-2011. He has written a letter to the Listener which is worth repeating here:
Read rest of post: Warwick Elley on STAR
Date posted: 26 March 2013
You may have read that NZCER has organised a series of workshops over the next couple of months. Thanks to those who have already signed up, we're looking forward to the sessions and working with a range of schools.
Some of the key ideas we will be exploring include:
Read rest of post: Workshops on Making the most of standardised assessments
Date posted: 12 March 2013
Let’s be clear –the revised STAR test does not deliver inflated results. Norms for the revised STAR test were generated on the basis of a carefully drawn national sample involving thousands of students. These norms have since been validated by subsequent collection of data from tens of thousands of students who have used the test in the classroom.
Read rest of post: STAR and the science of assessment development
Date posted: 12 March 2013
Welcome to our new blog, NZCER on Assessment. The idea is to provide a place for information, ideas and support about all aspects of assessment. We'll be talking about NZCER's assessment tools and services but we also want to address wider assessment questions and link to relevant international material. We reckon we've got quite a bit of expertise about assessment within NZCER.
Read rest of post: Talking about Assessment
Date posted: 10 March 2013