Age-Appropriate Assessment

As indicated above, one of the critical notions of the school-to-work initiative is that students and programs must be assessed frequently and for several possible purposes. Hunt and Hunt (1998) posit three primary purposes for assessment in school-to-work programs (or, for that matter, in any formal education program). These include:

• To determine whether a program as a whole is working (program evaluation)
• To determine whether or not individual students can be certified as having reached some level of accomplishment, including graduation from school (certification)
• To guide the student toward further education and training exercises (assessment to guide further learning).

Each of these purposes has somewhat different primary audiences, may call for different types of measurement or mixes of measurement methods, and will call for different frequencies of assessment. Thus, assessments to guide further learning will occur most frequently and will have as primary audiences teachers, students, and parents, while certifications will be less frequent and have as primary audiences employers or other institutions interested in readiness and levels of mastery of particular skills by prospective members of their institutions. Finally, programs will require regular assessments, will generally require a longer period of time for development of the information necessary to do accurate evaluations, and will be of primary interest to school managers, educational policymakers, legislative bodies, and others interested in the efficiency and effectiveness of programs.

In addition to purposes for assessment is the question of exactly what to assess. With regard to school-to-work programs, the SCANS work provides information about skills thought to be required generally by all employers. Later in this report, we summarize research in the world of work that identified dimensions of job performance that appear also to be generally important (similar dimensions of performance are also described in Hunt and Hunt, 1998). In any case, school-to-work efforts focusing on readiness for work should draw their definitions of what to teach and assess from research that describes the skills, knowledge, and abilities required in the workplace and the kinds of performance that make an individual successful in those settings.

Methods of assessment, then, should be tailored to meet the twin goals of (1) fulfilling the major purpose of assessment and (2) measuring the skills or performances that are viewed as important for success in the workplace. A third goal is matching the method of assessment to the developmental level of the student, described elsewhere in this report. Using assessments that are too "advanced" for the general or modal developmental level of a cohort of students may be misleading, and using assessments that target earlier stages of development probably would be demotivating to the students. Although many norm-referenced tests have age- or grade-level norms, relatively few assessment programs provide measurements of skills at a number of developmental levels based on the theory and research that describe those levels. Little, if any, research exists translating the skill and performance requirements of the world of work into measures appropriate at the primary and middle school levels. This is an excellent example of a potential arena for cooperation across psychology?s discipline lines.

It is beyond the scope of this report to identify which methods of assessment best match the goals outlined above, but it seems safe to assert that a variety of methods and approaches to measurement should be evaluated and applied in those situations where they best fit. Two important criteria to consider here include the psychometric adequacy of the methods or approaches for the purposes or goals that they must fulfill and the practicality and cost-effectiveness of the methods, again in terms of the goals they are intended to fulfill. There is no shortage of measurement approaches to investigate. These approaches include more conventional approaches, such as employing large-scale, multiple-choice testing programs like the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, perhaps enhanced and delivered via computer administration (Wolfe, 1997), and the relatively recent movement to develop alternative assessment methods that are more richly contextualized or "authentic" (Wiggins, 1990; Nichols, 1997). There has been recent work in developing measurements that more directly bridge the gap between the world of work and the school setting (Resnick & Wirt, 1996; Smith, 1997). Constructs such as tacit knowledge, practical intelligence, and practical cognition (Sternberg, Wagner, & Okagaki, 1993) have been advanced as important variables to assess individuals for success in the workplace. In the work setting, a variety of methods historically have been used to measure successful job performance (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, & Weick, 1970; Hunt & Hunt, 1998).

Strong advocates exist for these methods and approaches to assessment, to the point even of disagreement on appropriate theories and methods for the evaluation of the reliability and validity of measures (Nichols, 1997). It seems especially important that there be clear and open communication across disciplinary lines and between advocates of particular approaches. We reiterate the point made earlier about the urgency for cooperative efforts across psychological disciplines to identify, evaluate, and implement appropriate assessments for school-to-work initiatives.