Towards Measures of Different and Useful Aspects of Schooling

Abstract

Summative assessments in classrooms typically result in teacher assigned grades. Grades are well known to be highly predictive of high school graduation, college enrollment and college completion, but there has been little research that explains why. In the psychometrics literature there is a persistent perception that while standardized test scores are objective measures of fundamental academic knowledge, grades are more subjective assessments that may vary school-by-school. This chapter examines the extent to which grades in high school include teacher perceptions of student effort, participation and behavior that is a different and useful measure for schools beyond what can be provided by standardized test scores, and to what extent grades vary between schools. The chapter is organized into three related sections: a review of the literature on the relationship of grades to standardized tests, an example analysis of a large high school student dataset, and, finally, a comparison of the findings from the literature and the analysis to discuss how grades are a useful yet multidimensional assessment of academic knowledge and engaged participation in the schooling process, with the latter being highly related to overall student life outcomes.