Selecting the right math intervention assessment for students
Reliability
Educators must consider the assessment’s reliability when determining the right math intervention assessment. Each assessment scores a student’s work based on its own metrics, which may vary from assessment to assessment.
Some assessments use accuracy scores to determine a student’s ability to achieve more complex topics in their intervention plan. While this may seem like the most logical metric to use, other metrics provide a more reliable measure of a student’s future achievements.
A good indicator educators look at in terms of reliability is fluency scores. Assessments that generate fluency scores derived from foundational skills provide a more reliable insight into mastery of more complex skills among students.
Predictive validity
Every administrator wants a predictively valid math intervention assessment. The assessment should accurately predict the needs of each student and drive their intervention plan.
Utilizing a predictively valid intervention assessment allows educators to feel more confident in their plan of action. When considering an assessment, teachers and administrators should pay attention to the predictive validity coefficient. Many educators recognize a coefficient above .60 within a year as a valid assessment.
Student versus classroom
Teachers can decide whether to assess individual students or the classroom as a whole. While it might seem more efficient to rely on an educator's perspective of which students need an intervention assessment, research shows that testing all students can have an impact on everyone’s success.
By testing an entire classroom, assessments like SpringMath can boost every student’s performance. In fact, one of every two students who scored below the 25th percentile benefitted from the classwide math intervention based on the current and previous years’ results.
The right math intervention will produce the best results for your students and your district. SpringMath brings reliability, predictive validity, and ultimately results, helping your students excel in math.