An assessment that does not measure the objective is the most common flaw, and the hardest to see in your own work
Validity sounds abstract until you look at an assessment next to the objective it claims to measure and find they are testing different things. That mismatch is what most assessment coursework is actually checking for.
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Does this task require the thinking the objective names?
If the objective asks students to analyze and the assessment is multiple choice recall, the assessment is not valid for that objective regardless of how well written the items are. Checking cognitive level against the objective, item by item, catches most of what these assignments are assessing.
Rubrics are the second area. Criteria that describe quantity rather than quality, levels that differ only by adverbs, and a top level defined as excellent are all common. A usable rubric describes what the work looks like at each level specifically enough that two graders would agree.
Data analysis is the third. Most programs now expect you to take assessment results and say what should change instructionally. Reporting that 60% of students scored below proficient is description. Identifying which specific misconception the wrong answers reveal is analysis.
- Assessment matched to the objective's cognitive level
- Rubric criteria describing quality, not quantity
- Data analysis that reaches a misconception, not just a percentage
- An instructional response that follows from the data
What we work on
Your own assessments and data
- Checking validity against the objective, item by item
- Writing rubric criteria that distinguish levels meaningfully
- Formative and summative design, and the difference in practice
- Item analysis and what distractor patterns reveal
- Writing the instructional response the data supports
Your assessment, your students, your analysis
- We do not write your assessments, rubrics or analyses.
- We do not invent student performance data.
- We do not supply completed assessment instruments to adapt.
- We do not complete work you will submit under your own name.
- We teach the design principles, review what you built, and test whether it measures what you say.
Remove student identifiers from any data you send, including names in spreadsheet headers, which is where they most often survive. Read the full policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
That it measures what it claims to measure. At coursework level the practical test is whether the task requires the thinking the objective names. An objective asking students to evaluate needs a task where evaluation is required to succeed, not one where recall is sufficient.
Describe quality at each level rather than counting features. Uses three examples is a count. Selects examples that directly support the claim, including one that addresses a counterargument, describes quality. The test is whether two people grading independently would land in the same band.
Purpose, not format. Formative informs instruction while learning is in progress. Summative judges achievement at the end. The same quiz can be either depending on what you do with the result, which is the point most coursework wants you to make.
Which items were too easy or too hard, which failed to distinguish stronger from weaker students, and which distractors attracted responses. That last one is the most useful for teaching, because a popular wrong answer usually reveals a specific misconception.
Move from the percentage to the pattern. Which students, on which objective, making which error. Then the response is specific: reteach this concept to this group using a different representation, rather than review the unit.
Send the assessment and the objective
We will check whether the task requires the thinking the objective names, whether the rubric distinguishes levels, and what the data analysis is missing.
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