Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning by Elliott, Kratochwill, Littlefield Cook & Travers
	Chapter 11 Summary
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Assessment of Students' Learning Using Teacher-Constructed Methods

Assessment refers to the process of gathering information about a student's abilities and using such information to help make decisions about the student and future instruction. Testing is one means of obtaining evidence about a student's learning or behavior. Careful analysis of testing results aids educators in improving instruction, revising curricula, guiding students to realistic decisions, judging the appropriateness of subject matter, and assessing the conditions of learning. Assessment techniques should help teachers to determine if their objectives have been met. If objectives remain unmet, then teachers must search for the cause and attempt to discover whether it is in the student(s), the material, or the teaching methods. Advances in behavioral assessment and the school restructuring movement have led to the development of two new assessment approaches: authentic/performance assessment and portfolio assessment. These methods integrate real-world skills, focus on authentic classroom performance, and are generally found to be more sensitive to the needs of diverse student populations.

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