AssessMath!
Santa Cruz, CA — Innovative assessment program now available from Learning in Motion! Teachers looking to improve their mathematics assessment will be interested in this CD-ROM of over 1,000 assessment items for kindergarten through middle school. More than just a database—AssessMath! provides an easy, yet powerful method of searching and selecting items, previewing tests, and generating reports. What’s more, an instructional component discusses the elements critical to creating a balanced assessment program.
The Freudenthal Institute for Mathematics Education in the Netherlands and Tom Romberg of the University of Wisconsin assisted in selecting the highest quality items for the database. Some include student strategies and rubrics to help with the evaluation of students’ work. Teachers and school districts are not limited to existing items, however, as it is easy to add new items to the database.
Teaching practices have changed to reflect a new emphasis on problem solving and on students’ thinking processes; unfortunately assessment has remained largely the same. AssessMath! provides a solution with assessments that align with comprehensive curricula and content. Intelligently implemented, tests do more than assess current knowledge—they become learning opportunities. With AssessMath!, assessment takes its rightful place as a critical part of the learning process.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a group of thirty countries including the USA, Japan, Canada, and most of Europe. Since 2000, OECD has conducted periodic studies on student assessment in reading, math, and science. Interestingly, the mathematics assessment framework for their PISA Project (Program on International Student Assessment) shows a striking commonality with AssessMath!—three levels of mathematical competencies are at the heart of both frameworks. This provides an essential link between internal classroom assessment and external comparative assessment.
Because AssessMath! provides reports, it’s easy for teachers to track what their exams have assessed and how. Teachers can be sure that they’re testing both higher and lower levels of thinking, covering a balance of concepts, and providing opportunities for students to produce their own answers and communicate mathematically. AssessMath! allows teachers to analyze their testing trends and improve instructional practice. Every item in AssessMath! is coded to a set of criteria: grade, content strand, thinking level, format type, context (i.e., no context, essential, or non-essential), and time required for completion. Best of all, a simple interface allows teachers to add their own items or revise items as needed. Once entered, teachers simply apply the appropriate criteria and the item becomes available for use.
AssessMath! was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. It was researched and developed in a collaborative effort between Learning in Motion, Tom Romberg (University of Wisconsin), and Jan de Lange of the Freudenthal Institute, a renowned international center on mathematics and science education. AssessMath! is available for Windows. It is shipped on a single CD-ROM with a User’s Guide that offers in-depth descriptions of AssessMath! features. It is priced at $99. Learning in Motion offers a free 30-day preview of AssessMath! to US & Canadian educational institutions. Contact Customer Service at (800) 560-5670.
When asked to review Learning in Motion’s AssessMath!, I was skeptical that computer software exists that can be used to create tests that reflect the tenets of mathematics reform and the call for new forms of assessment. I expected to find a program that generates objective short response questions that students can answer quickly with little or no thinking. Imagine my delight in finding a program for grades K-8 that includes a database with over 1000 problems that challenge children to think and allows them to demonstrate their abilities to do mathematics...
AssessMath! is a great resource for teaching mathematics from a problem solving perspective. The software’s major selling points are the strength and variety of problems, the ease and flexibility of use, and the types of questions or task selections one may choose. I highly recommend this software program to educators and parents who want to design authentic or comprehensive mathematics assessment programs.
—Dr. Cindia Stewart reviewing in April 2000 for Parent’s Guide to Children’s Media
Mathematics assessment programs frequently disappoint me because they usually evaluate student performance using the lowest-level-thinking skills—rote operations. AssessMath! steps beyond that one-dimensional approach. The program is not for student use at the computer. Rather, teachers can use it to create assessment materials.
I will enjoy having this program to help me organize my mathematics assessment tasks.
—Paul G. Becher reviewing in April 2000 for Teaching Children Mathematics (http://www.nctm.org)
If your school or district is working on its assessment methods, then use AssessMath! as part of a workshop. This tool can provide a set of tests that teachers can collaboratively critique and discuss without that awkward personal element that comes from using each other's tests to critique. Often just seeing a number of problems that test a specific objective helps a teacher better understand a subject.
—Judi Mathis Johnson reviewing in September 2000 for Learning & Leading with Technology (http://www.iste.org/L&L/index.html)
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