SAGE Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment Quotes

“The only way any of us can improve—as Coach Graham taught me—is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves. If we can’t accurately do that, how can we tell if we’re getting better or worse? (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008,”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Shepard (2000) and Meisels (2003) believe that students in the United States have determined that their performance on standardized tests is more important than the what and the how of their learning experience and achievements. Darling-Hammond (2010) suggested that while higher-order, 21st-century skills are emphasized in other nations’ curricula and assessment systems, they have been discouraged by the kind of low-level multiple-choice testing encouraged by the NCLB legislation.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“A significant issue they observe is that students’ learning opportunities are restricted when uniformly low expectations are held for student learning or when a teacher’s feedback is either indiscriminant or absent.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“when students generate written responses to open-ended items they are better able to retain the information than when they are tested with multiple-choice items. Often the writing of responses helps students retain the information better than simply studying the material.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“In the most common policy model, 50% of a test’s items have to be aligned at or above the cognitive level of the state standard (Webb et al., 2007) to achieve depth of knowledge consistency. Under this model, the state standards represent the minimum a student should know and be able to do at the end of the year. That is, a student is expected to grow beyond what is specified in the standards during the year.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“demonstrating that in one manner of thinking the assessment process is coexistent with the motivational process.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“More unidimensional classroom structures (whole group instruction, little student choice, frequent summative grading) lead to more perceptions that ability is a normally distributed trait and more student perceptions that some students are smart and some are dumb. In contrast, more multidimensional classrooms (individualized instruction, student choice, less frequent grading) (Rosenholtz & Rosenholtz, 1981; Simpson, 1981) lead to more perceptions that ability is learned and that intelligence can improve.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Teachers’ instructional and assessment choices create different environments in which students “construct identities” (Rosenholtz & Rosenholtz, 1981).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“The way to develop self-efficacy, expectations of success, and attributions of control is to give students success with similar tasks and materials. That is, students will have more positive self-efficacy and affect and more productive goal orientations for an assessment task if they perceive they have done well at similar tasks (Pajares, 1996; Usher & Pajares, 2008).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“initial interest predicted both mastery and performance goals. Students who were more interested were more motivated both to learn and to perform well.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“For many teachers, grading is an important reason for assessment (Kusch, 1999; Wilson, 1990), and this limits the kind of assessment teachers do (Schmidt & Brosnan, 1996).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“This suggests that, at least in part, low achievement in schools is exacerbated by pupils not understanding what it is they are meant to be learning. (p. 40)”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“While successful students have at their disposal a repertoire of strategies to participate in this self-regulation of learning (Brookhart, 2001), less successful students do not. In fact, self-regulation strategies and capabilities, or the lack of them, may be the defining feature that separates successful and unsuccessful students. When students are assisted into the self-regulation process with formative assessment methods, such as deliberately teaching what students are to be learning and what constitutes quality in that learning, the provision of feedback and opportunities to use it, even unsuccessful students learn.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Sadler (1989) described a theory of formative assessment that is dependent on students’ understanding of what they are supposed to be learning and on their capacity to monitor the quality of their own work. He wrote (Sadler, 1989) that “the learner has to (a) possess a concept of the standard (or goal, or reference level) being aimed for, (b) compare the actual (or current) level of performance with the standard, and (c) engage in appropriate action which leads to some closure of the gap” (p. 121).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“The main basis on which students will build self-efficacy for an assessment is previous successes with similar tasks—a principle that still is one of the primary forces in good assessment design.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Lipnevich and Smith (2008) concluded that overall, detailed feedback was most effective when given alone, unaccompanied by grades or praise.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Students who were shown the grade they received for their first draft performed less well on the final version than those who were not shown their grade.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Feedback is most effective when it is the right kind (e.g., detailed and narrative, not graded), delivered in the right way (supportive), at the right time (sooner for low-level knowledge but not so soon that it prevents metacognitive processing and later for complex tasks), and to the right person (who is in a receptive mood and has reasonably high self-efficacy).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“good feedback practice is “anything that might strengthen the students’ capacity to self-regulate their own performance” (p. 205).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“effective CA articulates the learning targets, provides feedback to teachers and students about where they are in relation to those targets, and prompts adjustments to instruction by teachers as well as changes to learning processes and revision of work products by students.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“State and federal efforts in developing and assessing achievement of standards are powerful influences on teaching and assessment and create a context that often conflicts with best practice in CA.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“The emphasis is now on “students as formative decision-makers who need information of a certain type (descriptive at a certain time (in time to act) in order to make productive decisions of their own learning” (Brookhart, 2011, p. 4). Monitoring of progress can be achieved by both teachers and students.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“formative assessment is interactive, occurring throughout instruction. Through formative assessment, clues gauging how well learning is coming along are provided.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“There is evidence that the pressure applied by these external tests results in teachers giving more objective tests for their CAs, with less emphasis on constructed-response (CR) formats, performance assessments, or portfolios (Pedulla et al., 2003).”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“There are four components that are central to self-regulated learning (SRL): (1) goal setting, (2) monitoring progress toward the goal, (3) interpretation of feedback, and (4) adjustment of goal-directed action.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“A generalized finding was that, by and large, teachers lack expertise in the construction and interpretation of assessments they design and use to evaluate student learning (Marso & Pigge, 1993; Plake & Impara, 1997; Plake, Impara, & Fager, 1993), though this referred primarily to constructing, administering, and interpreting summative assessments.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“How teachers conceptualize assessments that they use and how they are integrated (or not) with instruction have a direct influence on student engagement and learning.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“teachers need the opportunity to construct their own understandings in the context of their practice and in ways consistent with their identity as a thoughtful professional (rather than a beleaguered bureaucrat). Teachers need social support and a sense of purpose, hence the appeal of communities of practice (although mandated communities of practice may undo the intended meaning). The”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“Formative assessment and summative assessment are compatible, if they focus on the same rich, challenging, and authentic learning goals and if feedback in the midst of instruction leads to internalized understandings and improved performance on culminating, summative tasks. This is not the same thing as adding up points on multiple interim assignments.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment

“This view of motivation, where students invest effort to get good at something, is often seen in out-of-school contexts – learning so as to be a dancer, a musician, a gamer. When in-school experiences lack this sense of purpose, it is most often because of dreary content and grading practices that reward compliance rather than learning. The measurement literature is replete with studies documenting the mixture of considerations that go into teachers’ grades. The majority of teachers use points and grades to “motivate” their students. Contrary to their intentions, this leads to the com-modification of learning and fosters a performance orientation rather than a mastery or learning orientation.”
― James H. McMillan, Sage Handbook of Research on Classroom Assessment