Analysing the Data from Assessments

In my past two blog posts I have been sharing my thoughts on the selection and administration of maths assessments.

As a Numeracy Leader, you may find yourself in the important position of having to lead/facilitate these discussions with your school leaders and teachers.

Sometimes there can be a fine line to walk.

Teachers are busy- they (understandably) want quick, accurate assessment data so they can continue their core job of teaching. 

The Principal and Leadership Team require accurate data on how your students are progressing. 

You will most likely find yourself stuck in the middle of these discussions.

So how do you ensure that the data you are getting from assessments is accurate and being used effectively to guide teaching?

Well firstly, as I have previously discussed- the selection of assessments is critical. An assessment must be valid, reliable, of quality construction, in a mode that is appropriate for your students (online, paper and pen, interview), fit the budget and provide data in a way that can be easily unpacked by teachers. Easy peasy, right??

Once you have been through the challenging process to select appropriate assessments to use, it is then critical to assist teachers to use the test data to guide their teaching.

Teachers are not statisticians. They need help to unpack PAT data, NAPLAN data and see what it really is telling them.

They need to be able to measure student growth accurately – and this cannot be done unless tests are considered to be parallel and of equal difficulty. For example, if a student completes test A and it asks questions 1,2,3 and then test B asks question 4,5,6. These are completely different tests, so comparing student achievement is dangerous unless these items have been psychometrically validated.

Otherwise, we don’t know if question 4,5,6 are actually harder. Maybe question 1,2,3 were worded really badly, or used a context the students weren’t familiar with like a train timetable, when they have never been on a train before….

So, unless we are really confident in the test data and test construction we may be making inaccurate inferences from the data. 

It is really important that as leaders, we help our staff to work through assessment data and support them to improve their skills in data analysis. This is where PLT and team meetings are critical.

Want to learn more from Dr Ange? Click here to find out more about her “Assessing Place Value in Years 3-6” Mini Course.