Writing

The respondents wanted a creative, interesting writing assessment that actually required the student to write. One instructor noted that "many of our assessments ask students to label the types of errors made in sample sentences or ask the student to choose a correct answer from multiple choices." These tasks cannot be considered valid measures, as they do not involve the competency being assessed: writing.

The respondents called for a tool that could assess the student's key strengths and weaknesses, and consequently inform instruction. For example, one respondent wanted a tool that referenced the strategies she needed to teach in order to address the student's weaknesses. Although the administration of a writing assessment can be straightforward, the scoring and interpretation is not. The respondents asked for guidelines that would help them to interpret writing samples and provide feedback to the student.

Learning Disabilities

When a student has difficulty learning, an immediate response is "Why?" Quite often, educators believe that learning challenges stem from an undetected learning disability. So it was no surprise to learn that many of the survey respondents wanted an assessment tool capable of diagnosing learning disabilities.

In order to be diagnosed as learning disabled, individuals need to meet four criteria. The individual must:

• Have average to above-average intelligence.
• Demonstrate a discrepancy between intelligence and achievement test scores.
• Demonstrate a discrepancy between achievement and age and ability.
• Have learning problems that are not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; mental retardation; emotional disturbance; or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.