Purpose
To provide aspiring and practicing educators, educational leaders and others invested in schools with the practical knowledge and skills needed to engage in valid and ethical assessment practices that guide decision making to inform teaching practices and school/district policies.
Background
Given the recent changes in educational policy at the national level, schools and districts need to provide ongoing evidence of student learning and achievement. This means that all members of school/district communities need to become versed in a variety of assessment activities, multiple methods for interpreting and summarizing data, and constructing sound educational policy and practices that are supported by the local evidence provided in schools. This certificate program is the first and only in New Jersey that is specifically designed to prepare educators for using assessment data to inform instruction.
Key Elements
- Design and use a variety of assessments to inform instruction and increase student learning.
- Be able to plan for, create and use pre-instruction and formative assessments that are intended to measure student knowledge and skills and inform instruction.
- Be able to plan for, create and use summative assessments that are intended to measure student learning and growth in students’ knowledge and skills.
- Critically examine a variety of summative assessment strategies and practices in order to construct valid assessments to meet specific educational objectives.
- Acquire the technical expertise to make sense of high-stakes, standardized test data.
- Demonstrate an understanding of technical issues related to classroom assessments in order to analyze and interpret various school and district level assessment data (i.e., standardized tests) for educational decision-making.
- Understand the ethical and political perspectives of assessment in order to evaluate a variety of classroom-based and standardized assessments.
- Flexible format to fit into your busy life.
- Three courses
- Online delivery format
- Earn the certificate within one year
Program Coordinators
