PAT
This blog posting analyses an individual student report to discuss how to choose the right PAT for your students.
When I was a principal I confess we only ever assessed using the recommended test for each year group and we measured progress by the stanine. We had no idea the tests were designed to give teachers rich, descriptive information about the level of the curriculum each student is working in, and, what their next steps should be. The other thing we didn’t know was that the main consideration when selecting a test is to ensure the level of difficulty is appropriate to the students concerned. What? You can choose? Yes you can!
NZCER's Education adviser Cathie Johnson has been working with schools on ways to use the STAR test.
I was working with a school recently and left them feeling good about using STAR because they had found out about a whole lot of new ways to use the data. As one teacher said, ‘You don’t know what you don’t know’. They suggested I get this information out there, so here goes.
Question #1: Did you know you can choose any test for any child?
The Progressive Achievement Test of Mathematics (PAT: Mathematics) provides norm-referenced information about students’ level of achievement in the skills and understanding of mathematics. This knowledge guides teachers’ decisions about mathematics teaching programmes and aligns with the current evidence-based approach to teaching and learning. In practice, these assessment tools are also used to inform overall teacher judgements (OTJs) when reporting to parents and to the Ministry of Education against National Standards in numeracy.
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.
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.
This posting looks at some examples of calcualting stanines at different times of the year.
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? When this approach is taken, you will have an accurate representation of the students’ stanine scores during Term 1 because the normed data is based on empirical data collected from students during this same point in time.
When reporting data from NZCER standardised tests using stanines, you need to think about:
