Objective 7: Interpret and critically evaluate reports of formal assessments

Being able to interpret and critically evaluate reports of formal assessment important as a child-

care professional. It helps me understand how to effectively use formal assessments when

assessing children. Formal assessments allow me as a professional collect valid, reliable,

specific, and sensitive information. This is what makes an assessment high quality. If assessed

correctly, formal assessments give teachers a better understanding of what developmental

milestones children typically develop at certain ages and gender. As a professional, I can always

reconvene my knowledge of how to adequately interpret and critically evaluate reports of formal

assessments when working with children and their families.

As Ive come to an understanding of interpreting and critically evaluating formal assessment

reports, I have learned how to interpret scores from standardized measure: the MacArthur

communicative Development Inventory: Words & Sentences. Doing this I learned how to

determine childrens scores and interpret them, and critically evaluate what those scores

indicated about the childs language development. I learned to successfully and effectively

scored children to see what percentile they were in. Using this information and evaluation, I was

able to provide recommendations for a follow up. I learned that formal assessments can be

standardized or non-standardized. I have learned the difference between both standardized and

non-standardized formal assessments. Standardized formal assessments are more consistent and

non-standardized formal assessments are not.

I have attached two pieces of evidence that supports my level of knowledge and shows that I

have met the goals of learning this objective. The first attachment is from in class activity # 3,

titled The meaning of the Mean. This activity has both a pretest and a protest that reflects my
knowledge of interpreting and evaluating a formal assessment. It consisted of agree or disagree

questions. On the pre-test I scored an 83% (10 out of 12). I was able to re-take the same test

(post-test) to again test my knowledge of this objective. I scored a 100% on the post-test, which

means my understanding of this has increased.