Teacher-Based Judgments of Academic Achievement: A Review of Literature

The focus of this paper is on data reflecting the match between teacher-based assessments of students’ achievement levels and an objective measure of student learning. These data are treated as relevant to the validity or accuracy of the judgmental measures. The paper begins with a discussion of two contexts in which such judgments are relevant: the teacher decision-making and assessment contexts. The second section presents a review of studies in which data are presented on the match between judgments and test scores. Two types of studies are reviewed. The first represents an indirect test of validity in the sense that there is a discrepancy between the judgmental measure (usually a rating of achievement) and the criterion measure (a score on a standardized achievement test). The second provides a more direct test of validity in that teachers are directly asked to estimate the achievement test performance of their students. On the whole, the results revealed high levels of validity for the teacher-judgment measures. The studies revealed, however, some variability across teachers in accuracy levels and suggested the operation of certain other moderator variables. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for future research on the judgments and a set of recommendations for improvements in the teacher-assessment process.