Getting Ready for State Assessments Using Tests to Prepare Students

Faculty Supervisor:

Gary Histand

Year of Project Completion:

2011

Student:

Matt Regier

Abstract

There is great importance placed upon the state assessments in each school across the nation because of their implications for state and federal funding and their ability to create a comparison between schools in a state. Because of the importance of these assessments, this research project was performed in order to investigate a way to possibly improve state assessment preparation and scores. According to a 2008 study by Karpicke and Roediger, retrieval practice, or testing, is an effective way to improve retrieval of word pairs, so this project was designed to test this theory in a classroom setting. Questions that aligned with assessed topics were gathered from sample licensure exams for teachers with help from cooperating teachers. Short, regular tests were administered to students on approximately a biweekly basis under these questions in an effort to familiarize them with the content and structure of the assessments, and scores were monitored on both the tests and assessments in order to determine the success of this tactic. All students who took part in this study passed their assessment except one, which indicates a strong correlation between consistent retrieval practice and state assessment scores.

Related file

Matt_Regier_Seminar_Paper.pdf