APPLYING PRINCIPLES TO THE EVALUATION OF CLASSROOM TESTS

The five principles of practicatily, realiability, validity, authenticity, and washbaxk

go a long way toward providing useful guidelines for both evaluating an existing
assessment procedure and designing one on your own. Quizzes, tests, final
exams, and standardized proficiency tests can all be scrutinized through these
five lenses.
Are there other principles that should be invoked in evaluating and
designing assessments ? the answer, of course, is yes. Language assessment is
sn extraordinarily. Designing effective assessment instruments is far too complex
to be recuded to five principles. Good test constuction, for example, is governed
by research-based rules of test preparation, sampling of tasks, item design and
constuction, scoring responses, ethical standards, and so on. But the five
principles cited here serve as an excellent foundation on which to evaluate
instrument sand to build your own.
1. Are the test procedurepractica ?
Praticality is determined by the teacher`s (and the students) time constaints,
costs, and administrative details, and to come extent by what occurs before
and after the test. To determine whether a test is practical for your needs, you
may want to use the checklist below.
Practicality checklist
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Are administrative details clearly established before the test?

Can students complete the test reasonably within the set time frame?
Can the test be administered smoothly, without procedural glitches?
Are all materials and equipment ready?
Is the cost of the test within budgeted limits?
Is the scoring/evaluation system feasible in the teachers time frame?
Are methods for reporting resultts determined in advance?

As this checklist suggests, after you account for the administrativ details of
giving a test, you need to think about the practicality of your plans for scoring
the test. In teachers busy lives, time often emerges as the most important
factor, one that overrides other considerations in evaluating an assessment. If
you need to tailor a test to fit your own time frame, as teachers frequently do,
you need to accomplish this without damaging the tests validity and
washback. Teachers should, for example, avoid the temptation to offer only
quickly scored multiple-choice selection items that may be neither
appropriate nor well-designed. Everyone knows teachers secretly hate to
grade test.