Assessment Methods & Student Performance Evaluation Flashcards

An AP teacher administers the same test twice to the same group of students two weeks apart and gets very different results. This indicates a problem with:

Answer: Test-retest reliability

Test-retest reliability measures score consistency over time; large discrepancies between administrations signal that the test is not producing stable, dependable results.

A student with high AP content knowledge scores poorly on a timed multiple-choice section due to test anxiety. This outcome most directly threatens:

Answer: The construct validity of the score as a measure of content knowledge

When factors outside the intended construct (such as anxiety) systematically lower scores, the resulting score no longer purely represents content knowledge, threatening construct validity.

Which data point would be most useful for an AP teacher conducting a post-exam item analysis?

Answer: The percentage of students who selected each answer choice

Distractor analysis — examining how many students chose each option — reveals whether distractors are plausible and whether the correct answer was clearly differentiated from alternatives.

Triangulating evidence from multiple assessment types (quizzes, essays, labs, exam scores) primarily helps teachers:

Answer: Build a more complete and accurate picture of student mastery

Using multiple data sources provides convergent evidence of student learning, compensating for the limitations of any single assessment type.

When an AP teacher discovers that a particular test question was answered incorrectly by almost all high-scoring students but correctly by most low-scoring students, the teacher should:

Answer: Investigate whether the item has a flaw or misleading wording

A negative discrimination index — where low scorers outperform high scorers — strongly suggests the item is flawed, ambiguous, or contains a keying error.

Which practice best supports equitable performance evaluation for English language learners (ELLs) in an AP course?

Answer: Providing linguistic scaffolds that do not compromise the rigor of the assessed skill

Appropriate linguistic scaffolds (e.g., glossaries, sentence frames) reduce irrelevant language barriers while preserving the integrity of the cognitive skill being measured.

A teacher uses AP exam score distributions from previous years to set instructional priorities for the current year. This is an example of:

Answer: Data-driven instructional decision making

Analyzing historical performance data to identify patterns and inform current instructional focus is a core practice of data-driven decision making.