Elementary science program evaluation test

The prompt reads. Some moist soil is placed inside a clear glass jar. A healthy green plant is planted in the soil. The cover is screwed on tightly. The jar is located in a window where it receives sunlight.

How long do you predict the plant will live? Write a justification supporting your prediction. Use relevant ideas from the life, physical, and earth sciences to make a prediction and justification. If you are unsure of a prediction, your justification should state that, and tell what information you would need to make a better prediction. You should know that there is not a single correct prediction. Many attributes make the ''plant in a jar" a good exercise for assessing understanding.

The situation, a plant in a closed jar, can be described to students verbally, with a diagram, or with the actual materials, thus eliminating reading as a barrier to a student response. The situation can be understood by students of all ages, minimizing students' prior knowledge of the situation as a factor in ability to respond. The explanation for the prediction can be developed at many different levels of complexity, it can be qualitative or quantitative. It can be based on experience or theory, and it uses ideas from the physical, life, and earth sciences, as well as cross-disciplinary ideas, thus allowing students to demonstrate the full range of.

The process of scoring student-generated explanations requires the development of a scoring rubric. The rubric is a standard of performance for a defined population. Typically, scoring rubrics are developed by the teachers of the students in the target population. The performance standard is developed through a consensus process called "social moderation. The draft performance standard is refined by subsequent use with student performance and work.

Finally, student performances with respect to the rubric are differentiated. Performances are rated satisfactory, exemplary, or inadequate. Differences in opinions about the rubric and judgments about the quality of students' responses are moderated by a group of teachers until consensus is reached for the rubric. Because a target population has not been identified, and rubrics need to function in the communities that develop them, this section does not define a rubric.

Rather the steps in developing a rubric are described. Developing a scoring rubric begins with a description of the performance standard for scientifically literate adults. That performance standard is developed by a rubric development team. Members of the team write individual responses to the exercise that reflect how each believes a scientifically literate adult should respond. They also seek responses from other adults. Based on the individual responses, the team negotiates a team response that serves as the initial standard.

The team's standard is analyzed into the components of the response. In the plant-in-a-jar exercise, the components are the predictions, the information used to justify the predictions, the reasoning used to justify predictions, and the quality of the communication.

Examples of predictions from a scientifically literate adult about how long the plant can live in the jar might include 1 insufficient information to make a prediction, 2 the plant can live indefinitely, or 3 insects or disease might kill the plant. Whatever the prediction, it should be justified. For example, if the assertion is made that the information provided in the prompt is insufficient to make a prediction, then the explanation should describe what information is needed to make a prediction and how that information would be used.

Scientifically literate adults will rely on a range of knowledge to justify their predictions. The standard response developed by the team of teachers will include concepts from the physical, life, and earth sciences, as well as unifying concepts in science. All are applicable to making and justifying a prediction about the life of a plant in a jar, but because of the differences in emphasis, no one person would be expected to use all of them. Some concepts, such as evaporation, condensation, energy including heat, light, chemical , energy conversions, energy transmission, chemical interactions, catalysis, conservation of mass, and dynamic equilibrium,.

Other concepts are from life sciences, such as plant physiology, plant growth, photosynthesis, respiration, plant diseases, and plant and insect interaction. Still other concepts are from the earth sciences, such as soil types, composition of the atmosphere, water cycle, solar energy, and mineral cycle. Finally, unifying concepts might be used to predict and justify a prediction about the plant in the jar. Those might include closed, open, and isolated systems; physical models; patterns of change; conservation; and equilibrium.

The knowledge required to predict the life of a plant in a jar is not be limited to single concepts. A deeper understanding of. A well-crafted justification. Keeping track of energy, of C 6 H 12 O 6 sugar , CO 2 carbon dioxide , H 2 O water , and O 2 oxygen , and of minerals requires knowing about the changes they undergo in the jar and about equilibria among zones in the jar soil and atmosphere. The jar and its contents form a closed system with respect to matter but an open system with respect to energy.

The analysis of the life expectancy of the plant in the jar also requires knowing that the matter in the jar changes form, but the mass remains constant. In addition, knowing that gases from the atmosphere and minerals in the soil become a part of the plant is important to the explanation.

A deeper understanding of science might be inferred from a prediction and justification that included knowledge of the physical chemistry of photosynthesis and respiration. Photosynthesis is a process in which radiant energy of visible light is converted into chemical bond energy in the form of special carrier molecules, such as ATP, which in turn are used to store chemical bond energy in carbohydrates.

The process begins with light absorption by chlorophyll, a pigment that gives plants their green color.

In photosynthesis, light energy is used to drive the reaction:. Respiration is a process in which energy is released when chemical compounds react with oxygen. In respiration, sugars are broken down to produce useful chemical energy for the plant in the reaction:. Photosynthesis and respiration are complementary processes, because photosynthesis results in the storage of energy, and respiration releases it.

Photosynthesis removes CO 2 from the atmosphere; respiration adds CO 2 to the atmosphere. A justification for a prediction about the life of the plant in the jar might include knowledge of dynamic equilibrium. Equilibrium exists between the liquid and vapor states of water. The liquid water evaporates continuously. In the closed container, at constant temperature, the rate of condensation equals the rate of evaporation.

The water is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Another attribute of a well-crafted justification relates to assumptions. The justification should be explicit about the assumptions that underlie it and even contain some speculation concerning the implications of making alternative assumptions.

Finally, a well-crafted justification for any prediction about the plant in the jar demonstrates reasoning characterized by a succession of statements that follow one another logically without gaps from statement to statement. The plant-in-a-jar assessment exercise is an appropriate prompt for understanding plants at any grade level. Development of the scoring rubrics for students at different grade levels requires consideration of the science experiences and developmental level of the students.

For instance, the justifications of students in elementary school could be expected to be based primarily on experiences with plants.

Student justifications would contain little, if any, scientific terminology. A fourth-grade student might respond to the exercise in the following way:. The plant could live.

It has water and sunlight. It could die if it got frozen or a bug eats it. We planted seeds in third grade. Some kids forgot to water them and they died. Eddie got scared that his seeds would not grow. He hid them in his desk. They did. The leaves were yellow. After Eddie put it in the sun it got green. The plants in our terrarium live all year long. Expectations for justifications constructed by students in grades are different.

These should contain more generalized knowledge and use more sophisticated language and scientific concepts such as light, heat, oxygen, carbon dioxide, energy, and photosynthesis. By grade 12, the level of sophistication should be much higher. Ideally, the 12th grader would see the plant in a jar as a physical model of the Earth's ecosystem, and view photosynthesis and respiration as complementary processes. Setting a performance standard for a population of students depends on the population's developmental level and their experiences with science.

Considerations to be made in using student responses for developing a rubric can be illustrated by discussing two justifications constructed by students who have just completed high-school biology. Student E has constructed an exemplary justification for her prediction about the plant in the jar. Student S has constructed a less satisfactory response but has not completely missed the point.

STUDENT E: If there are no insects in the jar or microorganisms that might cause some plant disease, the plant might grow a bit and live for quite a while. I know that when I was in elementary school we did this experiment.

My plant died—it got covered with black mold. But some of the plants other kids had got bigger and lived for more than a year. The plant can live because it gets energy from the sunlight. When light shines on the leaves, photosynthesis takes place. Carbon dioxide and water form carbohydrates and oxygen.

This reaction transforms energy from the sun into chemical energy. Plants can do this because they have chlorophyll.

The plant needs carbohydrates for life processes like growing and moving. It uses the carbohydrates and oxygen to produce energy for life processes like growth and motion. Carbon dioxide is produced too. After some time the plant probably will stop growing. I think that happens when all the. For the plant to grow it needs minerals from the soil. When parts of the plant die, the plant material rots and minerals go back into the soil. So that's why I think that how much the plant will grow will depend on the minerals in the soil.

The gases, oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapor just keep getting used over and over. What I'm not sure about is if the gases get used up. Can the plant live if there is no carbon dioxide left for photosynthesis? If there is no carbon dioxide, will the plant respire and keep living? I'm pretty sure a plant can live for a long time sealed up in a jar, but I'm not sure how long or exactly what would make it die.

I believe that this plant will not last past a week 3 days. This is so for many reasons. This will leave the soil dry while the air is humid. Since we are in a closed container no water can be restored to the soil condensation.

This in turn will cause no nutrients from the soil to reach the upper plant, no root pressure! Besides this, with photosynthesis occurring in the leaves, at least for a short time while water supplies last, the CO 2 in the air is being used up and O 2 is replacing it.

The carbohydrates are needed for energy. This jar also works as a catalyst to speed up the process by causing evaporation of H 2 O through incomplete vaporization.

All in all the plant will not live long 3 days at the most then downhill. Judging the quality of information contained in a justification requires consensus on the information contained in it and then using certain standards to compare that information with the information in the rubric.

Standards that might be applied include the scientific accuracy of the information in the justification, the appropriateness of the knowledge to the student's age and experience, the sophistication of the knowledge, and the appropriateness of the application of the knowledge to the situation. Foremost, judgments about the quality of the information contained in the justification should take into account the accuracy of the information the student used in crafting the response.

Student S's justification contains some misinformation about the water evaporation-condensation cycle and about dynamic equilibrium in closed systems. The statements in which this inference is made are "the moisture in the soil will most likely start to evaporate almost immediately. In contrast with Student S's misinformation, Student E's justification contains information that is neither unusually sophisticated when viewed against the content of most high-school biology texts, nor erroneous.

Judgments about the appropriateness of the information are more difficult to make. A person familiar with the biology course. In that case, the content of the biology course is being used as the standard for rating the quality of the responses.

Alternatively, the standard for rating the appropriateness of the information might be the scientific ideas in the content standards. Student E's response is rated higher than Student S's on the basis of the quality of information. Student S's justification provides some information about what the student does and does not know and provides some evidence for making inferences about the structure of the student's knowledge. For example, the student did not consider the complementary relationship of photosynthesis and respiration in crafting the justification.

Perhaps the student does not know about respiration or that the processes are complementary. Alternatively, the two concepts may be stored in memory in a way that did not facilitate bringing both to bear on the exercise. Testing the plausibility of the inferences about the student's knowledge structure would require having a conversation with the student.

To learn if the student knows about respiration, one simply has to ask. If the student knows about it and did not apply it in making the prediction, this is evidence that respiration is not understood in the context of the life processes of plants.

Student E's response is well structured and consistent with the prediction. The statements form a connected progression.

The prediction is tentative and the justification indicates it is tentative due to the lack of information in the prompt and the student's uncertainty about the quantitative details of the condition under which photosynthesis and respiration occur. The student is explicit about certain assumptions, for instance, the relationship of minerals in the soil and plant growth.

The questions the student poses in the justification can be interpreted as evidence that alternative assumptions have been considered. In contrast, Student S's prediction is stated with unwarranted assurance and justified without consideration of anything more than the availability of sufficient water.

Furthermore, the justification does not proceed in a sequential way, proceeding from general principles or empirical evidence to a justification for the prediction. Student S's response highlights an important point that justifies separating the scoring of information from the scoring of reasoning. A student can compose a well-reasoned justification using incorrect information. For instance, had the student posed the following justification, the reasoning would be adequate even if the conclusion that the soil is dry were not correct.

The reasoning would be rated higher had the student communicated that. Plants need energy to live. Plants get energy from sunlight through a process of photosynthesis. Plants need water to photosynthesize. Because the soil is dry, water can't get to the leaves, the plant can't photosynthesize and will die from lack of energy. Developing scoring rubrics through moderation requires highly informed teachers experienced in the process.

Even when teachers are adequately prepared, the moderation process takes time. The content standards call for knowledge with understanding. Considerable resources must therefore be devoted to preparing teachers and others in the science education system to design and rate assessments that require students to display understanding, such as just described.

The second assessment example focuses on inquiry. The content standards call for understanding scientific inquiry and developing the ability to inquire. As in understanding the natural world, understanding and doing inquiry are contingent on knowing concepts, principles, laws, and theories of the physical, life, and earth sciences. Inquiry also requires reasoning capabilities and skills in manipulating laboratory or field equipment.

As in understanding the natural world, inferences about students' ability to inquire. Understanding and doing inquiry are contingent on knowing concepts, principles, laws, and theories of the physical, life, and earth sciences. The example that follows describes twelfth grade students' participation in an extended inquiry. The exercise serves two purposes. It provides the teacher with information about how well students have met the inquiry standards. Equally important, it serves as a capstone experience for the school science program.

The extended inquiry is introduced early in the school year. It involves students working as individuals and in small groups investigating a question of their choice. Throughout the school science program, students have been encouraged to identify questions that interest them and are amenable to investigation. These questions are recorded in student research notebooks. Early in the senior year of high school, students prepare draft statements of the question they propose to investigate and discuss why that question is a reasonable one.

Those drafts are circulated to all members of the class. Students prepare written reviews of their classmate's proposals, commenting on the quality of the research question and the rationale for investigating it. Students then revise their research question based on peer feedback. Finally, students present and defend their revised questions to the class. The teacher encourages but does not require students to work together in research groups of two to four students.

After presenting research questions to the class, students form the research groups, which come to agreement on a question to investigate and begin developing a preliminary plan for conducting the investigation.

Each individual in the group is required to keep extensive records of the group's work, especially documenting the evolution of their final research question from the several questions originally proposed. As plans for investigations evolve, the research questions are sharpened and modified to meet the practical constraints of time and resources available.

Each student maintains journal notes on this process. When a group is satisfied that their plan has progressed to the point where work can begin, the plan is presented to classmates. Written copies of the plan are distributed for written review, followed by a class seminar to discuss each research plan. On the basis of peer feedback, each group revises its research plan, recognizing that as the plan is implemented, it will require still further revisions.

Each student in the class is responsible for reviewing the research plan of every group, including a written critique and recommendations for modifying the plan.

During this phase of the extended investigation, students engage in an iterative process involving assembling and testing apparatus; designing and testing forms of data collection; developing and testing a data collection schedule; and collecting, organizing, and interpreting data. Based on the notes of individuals, the group prepares a written report, describing the research. That report also includes data that have been collected and preliminary analysis. Based on peer feedback, the groups modify their procedures and continue data collection.

When a group is convinced that the data-collection method is working and the data are reasonably consistent, they analyze the data and draw conclusions.

After a seminar at which the research group presents its data, the analysis, and conclusions, the group prepares a first draft of the research report. This draft is circulated to classmates for preparation of individual critiques. This feedback is used by the group to prepare its final report. While the class is engaged in the extended investigation, the teacher observes each student's performance as the student makes presentations to the class, interacts with peers, and uses computers and laboratory apparatus.

In addition, the teacher has products of the individual student's work, as well as group work, including draft research questions, critiques of other student work, and the individual student's research notebook.

Those observations of student performance and work products are a rich source of data from which the teacher can make inferences about each student's understanding of scientific ideas and the nature of scientific inquiry.

For instance, in the context of planning the inquiry, students pose questions for investigation. Their justifications for why the question is a scientific one provide evidence from which to infer the extent and quality of their understanding of the nature of science, understanding of the natural world, understanding of the life, physical, and earth sciences, as well as the quality and extent of their scientific knowledge and their capacity to reason scientifically.

Evidence for the quality of a student's ability to reason scientifically comes from the rationale for the student's own research question and from the line of reasoning used to progress from patterns in the collected data to the conclusions.

In the first instance, the student distills a research question from an understanding of scientific. In the second instance, the student generates scientific information based on data. In either case, the quality of the reasoning can be inferred from how well connected the chain of reasoning is, how explicit the student is about the assumptions made, and the extent to which speculations on the implications of having made alternative assumptions are made.

The writing and speaking requirements of this extended investigation provide ample evidence for assessing the ability of the student to communicate scientific ideas. The National Science Education Standards envision change throughout the system. The assessment standards encompass the following changes in emphases:. Baron, J. In Focus on Evaluation and Measurement, vol. Baxter, G. Shavelson, and J. Evaluation of procedure-based scoring for hands-on science assessment. Journal of Educational Measurement, 29 1 : Champagne, A.

Journal of Research in Science Teaching 29 8 : Glaser, R. Koretz, D. Stecher, S. Klein, and D. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 13 3 : Loucks-Horsley, S. Kapitan, M. Carlson, P. Kuerbis, R. Clark, G. Nelle, T. Sachse, and E. Elementary School Science for the '90s. Messick, S. The interplay of evidence and consequences in the validation of performance assessments.

Educational Researcher, 23 2 : Moss, P. Can there be validity without reliability? Hartigan, and A. Wigdor, eds. Oakes, J. Ormseth, R. Bell, and P. Raizen, S. Baron, A. Champagne, E. Haertel, I. Mullis, and J. Assessment in Elementary School Science Education. Ruiz-Primo, M. Baxter, and R. On the stability of performance assessments.

Journal of Educational Measurement, 30 1 : Shavelson, R. Performance assessment in science. Applied Measurement in Education, 4 4 : Baxter, and J. Performance assessments: Political rhetoric and measurement reality. Educational Researcher, 21 4 : Americans agree that our students urgently need better science education. But what should they be expected to know and be able to do?

Can the same expectations be applied across our diverse society? These and other fundamental issues are addressed in National Science Education Standards —a landmark development effort that reflects the contributions of thousands of teachers, scientists, science educators, and other experts across the country. The National Science Education Standards offer a coherent vision of what it means to be scientifically literate, describing what all students regardless of background or circumstance should understand and be able to do at different grade levels in various science categories.

These standards reflect the principles that learning science is an inquiry-based process, that science in schools should reflect the intellectual traditions of contemporary science, and that all Americans have a role in improving science education. This document will be invaluable to education policymakers, school system administrators, teacher educators, individual teachers, and concerned parents.

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No thanks. Suggested Citation: "5 Assessment in Science Education. National Science Education Standards. Chapter 5 Assessment in Science Education. Page 76 Share Cite. The chapter closes with The assessment process is an effective tool for communicating the expectations of the science education system to all concerned with science education. Page 77 Share Cite. Figure 5. Components of the Assssment Process The four components can be combined in numerous ways.

Page 78 Share Cite. The Standards. Assessment Standard A. Page 79 Share Cite. Descriptions of the data-collection method. Descriptions of the method of data interpretation. Assessment Standard B. Page 80 Share Cite. The Insect and the Spider Titles in this example emphasize some of the components of the assessment process. DATA: Students' written responses. Teacher's observations. Page 81 Share Cite.

Page 82 Share Cite. The ability to reason scientifically. The ability to communicate effectively about science. Page 83 Share Cite. Assessment Standard C. Page 84 Share Cite. For instance, teacher quality is an indicator of opportunity to Assessment tasks must be developmentally appropriate, must be set in contexts that are familiar to the students, must not require reading skills or vocabulary that are inappropriate to the students' grade level, and must be as free from bias as possible.

Page 85 Share Cite. The choice among them is usually The choice of assessment form should be consistent with what one wants to measure and to infer.

Assessment Standard D. Page 86 Share Cite. Assessment Standard E. Page 87 Share Cite. Assessments Conducted by Classroom Teachers. Improving Classroom Practice. Page 88 Share Cite. Developing Self-Directed Learners. Reporting Student Progress. What Questions Are On the Test? Why Should You Participate? How is My District Performing? Explore results from the science assessment. How is NAEP shaping educational policy and legislation? NAEP data collection will commence January Learn More.

Home Assessments Science. How to Interpret Science Results Find out how to interpret the results of the science assessment, including the potential effects of exclusion on assessment results. How is Your State or District Performing? District Snapshots District Profiles Tool. Scale scores represent how students performed on the mathematics assessment.