Customer Reviews

Educational Assessment of Students (5th Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a "must-have" resource for anyone who has an interest in testing and assessment. I am a psychometrican, and it is a widely used resource among our psychometrics staff, as well as, with our measurement consultants and assessment specialists. It provides a comprehensive background into test reliability and validity. In addition, it presents many helpful tools for constructing all types of items. The checklists are especially beneficial, as well as, the chapter on interpreting score reports. Because the book is so comprehensive, it may best be used as guidebook and/ or reference book, rather than a book that one would read from cover to cover in the hopes to digest it all. I cannot say how many times I have referred back to this book in both my educational and professional life. I believe that it is written on a level that is relatively easy to follow, and the numerous examples that he provides help to illustrate the material. It is the most comprehensive book of it's kind in the field of educational assessment. I am also a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and many students that I worked with during my doctoral study there also hold an opinion similar to mine. If the book is used in the way that it is intended to be used, it will probably be one of the most used reference books in your educational assessment library.

This textbook provides a broad and thorough overview of many assessment tools including essays, portfolios and standardized tests. The textbook covers many areas including:

1) How to choose assessments based on learning objectives and contextual factors
2) How to develop and evaluate classroom assessments.
3) How the validity of assessment effect results
4) How to use formative assessment
5) How to interpret and use standardized tests

The most important feature of the textbook are the development and evaluation guidelines and checklists provided for each type of assessment.

This is a must for anyone involved in student assessment.

The shipping for this item was pretty fast. The book is in great condition and was fairly priced. The description did not tell me that it was a hardcover book, but that was a positive surprise for me!

This book might be fine, if you already understand assessment. I'm using this book as I work toward my second master's, but I have no previous exposure to the subject--and this book is NOT helping.

My problems with the book stem from the way it explains things and also from the way it's designed and laid out. As an example of its explanations, "Prerequisite knowledge and skills deficits" are defined/explained like this: "A deficit is defined as a student's failure to have learned concepts and skills necessary to profit from instruction in a course or unit" (p. 131 in the 6th edition). That's it. There's nothing more there. Now, I'm no expert--but where is the "prerequisite" part of that explanation? And this is just an example that uses a term I'm pretty sure I can *tell* isn't being explained fully.

In terms of layout and design--the whole book is brown, brown, brown. Brown is a lovely color, but some variety would be nice! The margins are too small to write in, which hampers my reading. The different levels of headings are hard to tell apart because they're all the same color and there doesn't seem to be any difference in font size. Broader headings are all in caps, but they blend right in with narrower headings.

In short, if you're a teacher looking for a textbook and you want this student's honest opinion--keep looking!

I recieved my order quickly and the book was in the shape that the seller said it was.

Uggg... A need for the degree.... oh well. The good news is that I got it quickly and for a goood price and it will be on sale again in a few weeks.... wanna buy it? :0

I really hate to write detrimental things about books I do not like, but this is a required book in some class at my University...and frankly, I don't know why. To be honest, I think part of it was the way the book was used in the classroom, and how the professors made us jump from one topic to another without gaining a full understanding of the first one! Just in case someone thinks I am just a student who could not hack the topic, my BS and MS are in Neuroscience, and I took statistics twice before this...once in neurostatistics and once in epidemiology. Try and read some of the journals in Neuroscience some time...Believe me they are much worse, or should be much worse then a social science document such as this.

I object to authors who write to impress their peers rather than write to explain their topic areas in such a way so that a student coming from another field can begin to understand what is going on fairly soon after reading the textbook, or parts of the textbook. I really do not care if the audience the authors/author are trying to reach are college students or graduate students, if the writing is such that the material does not make sense without total explanations from the teacher, then something is wrong. Most of the fifty some odd people in both classes who I talked to about it agreed that both the book and the classes were boring, unstimulating, and that they were having a difficult time comprehending the material presented. Since most of these people were and are teachers or those who work in educational research, it obviously wasn't me or them. I think the idea is supposed to be to make curricula accessible to all students. Since I am a Deaf person, and have had my fill of professors who definitely did not try to make their classes accessible, I tend to hold the writers of textbooks up to a high standard. None of the students in the class were 'learning-disabled' but this book did an awfully good job of making feel as if we were. All of us tried to sell this book back rather than keep it in our shelves which at a graduate level is unusual, but because they are bring a new edition out the books were unresaleable. I am looking for a more coherent text for my own personal use on education assessment...it won't be this one. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

For a used book the product was in great shape. The book had very minor markings on it or in general anything wrong with it compared to brand new. Great service with very quick shipment. It only took it a couple of days to arrive. Highly recommended seller.

Product arrived in good shape and very quickly following a report to customer service of item not received.

I got exactly what I paid for. I saved $60 for this book that I need for my grad. class. At this point in my life, there are way too many things that I have to spend my money on other than books. This is a great seller. She kept me updated on exactly when she sent the package. Very fast, and very friendly. Keep it up!