Comparing formal and informal reading assessments in elementary education

¶ … standardized tests and there is math association with the results. On the other hand informal reading assessments do not have the same formal data requirements and is based more on performance. These two kinds of assessments will be critiqued in this paper.

Formal Reading Assessments

Parents should know and understand not only why their children are being accessed, but through which process the assessment is being conducted. The more parents are involved in the education of their children, the closer parents will be to opportunities to participate and contribute to those important years of education. Brenda Weaver writes in Scholastic magazine that first of all, whether it is informal or formal, assessments need to match up with the purpose of assessing any particular student. Formal assessments are generally used to assess "overall achievement" and to "compare a student's performance with others at their age or grade."

Parents should be informed as to the purpose of reading assessments, and they should be assured this is not an intelligence test but rather it is used to determine "…the level of text that will challenge students" and will "…motivate them to read rather than causing frustration" (Rubin, 2011, p. 606). Formal Reading assessments are standardized tests, designed to evaluate elementary students based on formulae designed by a corporation or a scholastic organization, and they tend not to be specific to any location or nationality or ethnicity.

Disadvantages of Formal Reading Assessments

Jim Rubin notes that many school districts use standardized (formal) assessment tests, and generally those standardized tests are designed to assess: "phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension" (Rubin, 606). However, Rubin questions "the wisdom" of a teacher who uses only one formal assessment test; using "only one tool" (test) to pass judgment on a student's reading ability is not the smartest or best way to make an accurate assessment, the author of this article asserts. Rather than a standardized assessment test of a student's reading ability, Rubin suggests using an informal test like the "cloze test" or the "Informal Reading Inventories" assessment test. Either one of those informal assessment tests "…offers a classroom teacher an opportunity to exert control of the process," after all, the teacher knows best which reading material is appropriate for each student in his or her classroom (Rubin, 606).

Researches have been questioning the "reliability" of settling on standardized assessment tests from commercial publishers for some time because the "validity" of assessment based on a single standardized test "…can be questionable," Rubin continues (607). To get a valid picture of the reading comprehension of a student, teachers should not rely "…exclusively on the scores from a single standardized test" -- in particular, when a teacher has a diversity of ethnicities and cultures in his or her classroom (Rubin, 606).

What should a teacher do regarding formal vs. informal assessments? For one thing, since teachers have little or no say in the administration of formal tests, they can break out of that conundrum and instead they can "…feel empowered" when they use alternative -- or their own -- assessment strategies (Rubin, 607).

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) -- a formal assessment test that is given to 4th graders in forty countries very five years -- has its disadvantages, according to the Center for Public Education (Ogle, CPE, 2007). A first pertinent question is, why test 4th graders? The CPE answer to that question is this: because 4th grade represents a "key transitional point in children's development as readers" worldwide, and at this point in a child's education, formal reading instruction is either ending or about to end (Ogle, CPE).

There are several negative aspects of the PIRLS project: a), it is a "huge, complex undertaking, costing millions of dollars and involving thousands of people worldwide"; b) the PIRLS is "fraught with technical challenges" and because it is international, "problems exist"; and c) in order to present accurate assessment results, there must be translations from German to English, French to English, and myriad other translations, and this process can be fraught with challenges and errors (Ogle, CPE).

Advantages and disadvantages of Informal Assessment Testing

Author Luis Rosado points out that informal assessments can be (and often are) very basic and uncomplicated. For example, a teacher can develop his or her own system, such as asking a child to "retell a story" which affords the teacher an idea about the student's level of comprehension (Rosado, 2006, p. 89). The teacher can make a "checklist of competencies, skills, or requirements," which gives the teacher a way to "capture behaviors that cannot be accurately measured with a paper and pencil test" (i.e., a standardized test) (Rosado, 89). The disadvantage of a checklist, Rosado explains, is the structure of the checklist, which can be inflexible.

Another informal assessment tool that teachers use is the "anecdotal records" approach; the teacher captures the various processes that a student uses in order to solve a problem; the disadvantage of anecdotal record keeping is the "…amount of time necessary to complete the record and difficulty in assigning a grade" (Rosado, 89). Portfolios are also used for assessing a student's reading competency, Rosado explains on page 90. Advantages of a portfolio (which cannot just be a "scrapbook for collecting handouts") include: a) they present "a clear picture of students' progress"; b) they "are not affected by one inferior test grade"; and c) they help develop students' "self-assessment skills" (Rosado, 90). The disadvantages of portfolios as informal assessment tools include: a) the amount of time a teacher must invest in teaching students "how to develop meaningful portfolios"; b) the time it takes teachers to assess portfolios; and c) the fact that parents may not grasp how the teacher will grade the portfolio (Rosado, 90).

In conclusion, it would seem from the literature that informal assessment testing is preferable to standardized / formal testing for elementary students. The teacher that wants the easy way out and is not really dedicated to assessing students' reading abilities will most likely choose standardized tests -- and in the process keep an eye on how students seem to be doing. The conscientious teacher however will devise his or her own way of informal assessment, either as a stand-along process or in combination with formal assessment tests.