Thing 12 Evaluation & Assessment Tools

Currently in my school we have a student information system, RenWeb, which allows access to student demographic information, grades, and medical information. It has been helpful for parent communication and co-worker communication because we can see how students are doing in each others courses. I look forward to using course management systems like moodle to streamline how students access and complete work. Data warehousing of item level information for assessment would also be helpful for teachers to use to inform instruction. The biggest challenge right now is getting our data into a tool that allows us to run reports, find similarities and differences, and look at trends.

The FERPA/HIPAA quiz was informative because I wasn’t aware of some of the particulars of FERPA. I thought that once a student turned 18 and graduated from high school, that their parent no longer had access to their child’s educational record. I learned that was false, as long as the parent still claimed the child on their IRS forms, the parent had the right to see the child’s educational record. Another interesting thing I learned is the lack of length of time required for maintaining student records. As a counselor I get calls all the time asking for verification of attendance for students who did not graduate from our institution or for verification that students completed GED testing at our school. I often do not have any records, yet other educational agencies expect that I will have them. It seems obvious that a student should be allowed to see his or her educational record, but then I wonder what purpose it would hold. Keeping FERPA information close at hand is probably the best way to decide if a record should be shared or not.

Rubrics allow me to give students more freedom to complete requirements for a given task. It also allows them to self score themselves to see if they are completing work that is worthy of demonstrating mastery and advanced skill. It helps me to better assess in an objective way, rather than subjectively.

Educational surveys like Google forms are great to collect large amounts of data and summarize that data for further consideration. I used the Google Forms as a survey tool to determine where students were feeling the most need to get practice for the upcoming ACT. In the past I have used Survey Monkey to do needs assessments for our school guidance program. The ease of use for both Google Forms and Survey Monkey make them very user friendly surveying tools.