Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know (3rd Edition)

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Summary: Easy to understand, helpful for K-12 teachers
Review: Popham's work is some of the easiest-to-read, least jargon filled, in the area of designing classroom tests. Chapter by chapter, he takes the reader through the different kinds of test questions, how to write them, how to grade them, how to tell if your students understand what you're asking; then he provides case studies, examples, and lists of further reading.

The easy kinds of questions come first: selected-response, that is, questions where the test-taker picks an answer from ones provided by the teacher, such as multiple-choice, true-false, and matching. Popham explains how to write these clearly, how to reduce the confusion on the direction of true-false questions (and why it's NOT a good idea to try and "trick" your students by writing ambiguous or deliberately confusing answers).

Then the constructed-response type of questions, that is, ones where students write the answers: short-answer and essay. Again, Popham discusses how to write these clearly, how to write instructions indicating what kind of answer you expect, and, perhaps most important, especially for the novice teacher, how to grade these types of questions. He goes through the issue of "rubrics" - grading systems for essay questions which tell how many points will be given for different features of the answer, such as the value of the information, the spelling and grammar, the use of certain key words, etc, and how to decide what will constitute an "excellent" or "acceptable" or "not acceptable" answer in those categories.

One of the most extensive and informative features of the book is Popham's sidebars on how to explain to students why they have to take these kinds of tests, and, even more, how to explain tests to parents, especially standardized tests. Explaining to parents what the tests are supposed to measure, and how test results will be used, is a very big issue these days, especially in states with high-stakes testing; Popham's book will give you practice in addressing questions from parents, administrators, etc.