Professional Books — Review
 Evaluating Students:
How teachers justify and defend their marks to parents, students, and principals
by Alex Shirran
Pembroke Publishers 2006
ISBN 978-1-55138-206-7
$24.95, 96 pp., adult
www.pembrokepublishers.com
At a time when school and teacher accountability is being touted by educational leaders, when schools’ testing and evaluation practices are actively scrutinized, this book is timely, to say the least. If you need a guidebook on how to plan evaluative processes and tests that are not only defensible to parents and administrators, but also accurately assess stated course goals and academic content, this easy-to-read book will show you how. Filled with numerous examples of challenges teachers have faced from confrontational parents unhappy with their children’s marks, the author outlines how teachers can avoid common pitfalls. It carefully outlines what teachers need to do to provide a fair, accurate system of marking that follows the three components of evaluation: stated criteria level, the academic level of thought, and a statement of conditions. This book outlines how to plan course goals and objectives, create unit plans, prepare lesson plans and provide relevant criteria necessary in constructing valid tests and assignments. Filled with helpful blackline masters that can help you organize course planning, the author goes beyond the steps in crafting criterion-based evaluation to detail the structure and pros and cons of standardized tests as well. Especially helpful are the annotated list of twenty characteristics of effective teachers and the ten characteristics of students with superior grade point averages. This book is a thorough examination of essential information on grading, testing and evaluation, but more than this, if used effectively it can help every teacher deal proactively with a situation where an administrator, parent or student challenges the validity of your evaluations. As such, it should be a book read by all teachers who, on a regular basis, provide letter grades or test scores to students.
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