Parent Opinions About Standardized Tests, Teacher’s Information and Performance Assessments

Surveying and interviewing parents of third-grade students in a working-class and lower-middle-class school district, researchers in this study set forth to ascertain parents’ opinions about assessment, including their opinions about standardized tests versus performance assessments. The researchers sought answers to several critical questions including “how do parents in the sample respond to Gallup Poll questions about the desirability of standardized national tests and the potential uses for standardized test results?” As part of the study, parents were given an opportunity to review performance assessment tasks and decide what type of assessment,standardized or performance, was most suitable for classroom use. The results indicated that when allowed to look closely at performance assessment problems, most parents endorsed performance assessments for district purposes and especially preferred their use in classroom contexts.