Week 13: Assessment in Education
This is your last week of class! You have worked amazingly hard to get to this point and you should be very proud of your hard work. You will know this information very well when you get to your NCE exam, and when you are “in the field” and need to rely on the knowledge gained from this class, you will be able to use it well to accomplish your objectives.
One objective that counselors must have when working with young people, whether in career centers, college admissions, or as middle school and high school counselors, is to give them every possible advantage to pursue higher education. In some cases, this means encouraging young people and parents to get engaged in the college search, in other situations it means collecting data and using the results to evaluate the effectiveness of a counseling center or school program! Either way, counselors rely on data to assist them in making decisions. Those decisions change the way counselors work with young people, minorities, learning disabled and physically disabled students, staff and faculty, and the higher ed community locally. We rely on data.
This chapter has great information on many aspects of assessment in education, and you will need to read it carefully. The quiz is built on this information and you will see it on the NCE exam as well. The one thing that the chapter does not really cover well, is where to get good information on how to help those students who especially need the encouragement, scholarships, etc., get college information, and how to approach and work with them. We will be covering that in this week’s materials so that you will have that advantage and
information regardless of where you work.
There will be no team discussion this week since you are completing your final paper, which is due by the end of this week.
Session Objectives
By the end of this week, you will:
- Discuss the goals of school assessment programs
- Explain the common assessment activities of school counselors
- Define specific learning disabilities
- Describe the assessment process related to specific learning disability determination and responsiveness to intervention (RTI)
- Describe the process and procedures for assessing giftedness
- Discuss the use of test preparation and performance strategies in increasing achievement test scores
- Describe the purpose of environmental assessment in the schools
- List and explain the competencies in assessment and evaluation for school counselors
- Discuss the issue of high-stakes testing in education
- List and discuss the guidelines for reporting assessment results to the other professionals and the public
Important Reminders
Your completed Research Proposal is due the end of this week, at the end of Week 13. There are no extensions given since grades are due to the Registrar within the week. You should have most of the writing completed at this time and should be checking to see that the Research Proposal is complete and edited correctly for APA format as well as for content.
You should also be concerned with being sure you have taken any quizzes necessary to attain the quiz grade that you would like to have. You may take the quizzes and retake quizzes at any time after they are visible. The quizzes end in Week 13 and are available through the last day of the course.
As well, your PowerPoint Presentation is also due this week. Remember to follow the directions explicity.
