Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Alternative Assessment v. Standardized. Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page research paper that looks at alternative (or authentic) forms of assessment and compares these to standardized forms. While the majority of educators agree that assessment should play an integral role in the education process, many educators feel that this role is too important to restrict it to the use of standardized testing. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khalass.rtf
Buy This Term Paper »
Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Dorn and Sabol, 2004, p. 3). While the majority of educators agree that assessment should play an integral role in the education process, many educators feel that this role
is too important to restrict it to the use of standardized test "as the only indicator of student learning or success in an academic program" (Madeja, Dorn and Sabol, 2004,
p. 3). The Kentucky Department of Education defines "assessment" as a "test, planned procedure, method or task used to guide decisions about student learning, curriculum and instruction" (Moore, 2003,
p. 20). Standardized testing generally refers to traditional forms of assessment, such as multiple-choice tests, where as alternative assessment, also known as authentic assessment, refers to strategies that are performance
based, such as observation, rubrics and portfolios, as well as performance testing of real-world tasks (Moore, 2003). Standardized testing is essentially passive in its orientation, yet proponents of this form
of assessment argue that "close-ended items are more objective and reliable than alternative types of assessment" (Moore, 2003, p. 20). Alternative testing, on the other hand, presents students with a
form of assessment that reveals the degree to which students have actually mastered material, as students are offered the opportunity to describe the cognitive processes that they used to arrive
at answers (Moore, 2003). As this indicates, alternative assessment is more subjective in nature than traditional forms of assessment (Moore, 2003). Research suggests that the quality of learning that
is required for the twenty-first century cannot be achieved by "using many of the standardized tests available," which only measure specific learning outcomes and not the level of mastery that
"the higher education community is calling for" (Riorda, 2005, p. 52). A major problem with standardized testing is that it does not provide clear information on the students "knowledge and
...