Advantages of Traditional/Standardized Assessment
We came to a conclusion that both alternative assessments and traditional assessment have their merits and demerits. So it is only fair that we share what are the merits and demerits of using both types of assessment. This is important for us to give a fair judgment in the end as to why alternative assessment is more suitable to use in Social Studies assessment. Having said that please take note that we are not condemning any of these types of assessment but we will be choosing the type of assessment suitable to enhance students’ ability at this moment of time. Let us share the advantages of traditional standardized assessment first. According to Franklin, traditional assessments are helpful in gauging students' progress and Mathison says that traditional tests allows examiners to pose an identical set of questions simultaneously, under similar conditions, in much less time to a rapidly expanding student body, thereby producing a comparable score (Mathison, 2006). The advantage of traditional test like essays include how it can reveal how well students can recall, organize, and clearly communicate previously learned information. When well written, essays tests call on such higher-level abilities as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. http://www.college.cengage.com/education/pbl/tc/assess.html
On top of that development of large scale standardized testing increase the number of people taking test and using test scores as policy instruments because it has the ability to test more people at less cost and in less time (Sandra Mathison, 220, Stiggins, 1991).
Traditional tests can’t be beaten when it comes to reliability, not to mention efficiency. When responses are obviously right or wrong, there is little chance that the scores on a test will vary between one rater and another or if the student takes two parallel versions of the same test. This means that traditional tests lend themselves to a wide range of statistical analyses and comparisons because we can be fairly confident that the true score on a test is very close to the reported score (Gasporro, 1997). There is also evidence of the strength of traditional assessment where public accountability paves the way to school improvement. There is a manifestation of this belief since the 1930s through the college admissions test. These tests also known as the SAT became very important national measures of school accountability. If scores trend upward, the education system is doing well. If they trend downward, stinging indictments of school quality pour from all sides. It's not uncommon for those in positions of political vulnerability to admonish teachers to "raise our average SAT scores." Thus accountability for test scores is viewed as the key to productive educational change (Stiggins, 1995)
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