Blog Post 4

Assessment is always a tricky topic. When I was initially reading the introduction of the chapter, I reviewed the standards for assessments written by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English. The standards seemed very well thought out and applicable to all students. Something that I did not know about assessments was that the IDEA "requires that students receive assessments but it does not specify the actual tests you must give." I'm personally not a fan of norm-referenced tests because I think that every student learns differently, and therefore tests differently. I was in the gifted program my whole life, but when it came to standardized testing, I tested poorly because I get horrible test anxiety. It doesn't necessarily mean that I don't know the material, I just don't test well. Because of this, criterion-referenced tests were more on my level because as the book states, they "do not specifically compare an individual's score to other people's scores. Rather, they measure an individual's mastery of content."

I never realized how many things you have to take into consideration when assessing deaf or hard of hearing students. I have somewhat of a problem with the main issues that are associated with assessing language of children with hearing loss. The main issues include the lack of skilled examiners, confusion over the use of deaf or hearing norms, and the lack of easily administered materials. My primary issue with those things is that how can the assessment be fairly graded when the examiner might not have any idea what he or she is doing? It's difficult enough for DHH students to be assessed, but if the assessment is administered by someone who is unfamiliar with the so-called "norm" of children with hearing loss, how can that assessment be fairly administered? It cannot.

When I was reading over the "interviews" of different types of evaluators, it was interesting how the answers were somewhat similar. I particularly agree with "Susan's Perspective" on when she evaluates her students. Instead of simply saying she evaluates them on the mandated evaluations and re-evaluations, she stated that she assesses them "all the time," and that "there isn't much time that goes by that I'm not thinking about what they are doing, what I am doing, and whether we have a good mix." I think to conduct a proper evaluation, considering how you work with your students is critical. Sometimes students may act differently when they know they're being evaluated, versus just being informally evaluated in their comfort zone.

Obviously, language assessment is more challenging when a student has a hearing loss. There are just so many factors you have to take into consideration that you might not consider with students who have no hearing loss. The overall concept of narrowing down what your content includes when evaluating the students is very important. You cannot expect them to know everything, therefore focusing on teaching them in-depth about one area of content, then evaluating them on that content area is the best way to approach evaluation in my opinion, and based on the readings.

When considering language and communication instruction, the book states that there are "many different communication approaches." As a teacher, you have to get to know your students in order to "determine the most efficient pathway in which the child encodes language." From day one, you need to informally assess your students and figure out their learning styles, what level of language they are currently on, their learning potential, how they best acquire language, etc. The teacher must also be capable of efficiently teaching the language in order to teach it to the children.