Item Analysis Report

Analysis report allows teacher to look closely at how students did on a particular standard or a particular question to help guide instruction going forward. Maybe a majority of the students do not understand a specific concept so teacher can go back and see where the disconnect was. Also, it could be one student who struggles so teacher can address that individual's needs. It allows the teacher to focus in on a single of a few students to focusing in on an a group's overall performance.

Item analysis reports allow teachers to not only see what score a student received, but also more specific information. The analysis provided can be broken down by standard or stand. The reports also guide the teachers in their reteaching by providing information such as particular questions that were missed abundantly.

Item analysis allows the teacher to see how students performed overall on different questions. If students did particularly well or bad on a question, the teacher could re-examine the question to make sure that there is not a flaw in the question or answer options before making further plans for reteaching or review of a concept. A real life example of this is when I gave a test that, based on how I had worded the question, could be answered by two different options, whereas I had only considered one of the answers correct. I was able to give students who chose the correct "wrong" answer credit for their response and discovered that overall my students did significantly better than previously thought. It also allowed me to quickly identify a question that needed revision before the next administration. 

The Standards-Based report feature of EADMS allows a teacher to view detailed test results for a current or previous year's testing. Once a teacher and/or test have been selected, data can be viewed by standard or by item, and it can be determined if a particular test item or standard was difficult for your students. This data must be viewed with the understanding that a standard may only have been tested with one item or question thereby its significance may not be great.

An item analysis report can help a teacher find out how students did on different standards or strands within the test. Teachers can also observe which questions students had the most trouble on in general and reteach as necessary. This also helps a teacher guide their instruction for the next time they teach similar topics, so that they can slow down and emphasize or elaborate on specific ideas to increase retention of what is being taught.

The teachers can us the test to do a before and after assessment to see how the students improve on their content understanding. Teachers can also use the tests to see how they did on specific stands and see what kind of additional instruction or activities are needed for student understanding. This drives the instruction with in the class all the time, but using EADMS allows this to be viewed even from year to year if you want to know changing your lessons one year resulted in better understanding for the students.  

The Item Analysis Reports are a useful tool for teachers to be able to identify specific areas of strength and weakness in student understanding. By targeting the weak areas of understanding teachers can specifically reteach and review the concepts that will most help students improve. It also can help inform future lesson planning when used over time as student achievement patterns emerge.

Once the testing window is closed, a teacher can go to report builder and pull the scores in a very simply and straight forward format.

If they want to go deeper into specific scores or strands, then they can click into the standards based report. In the options, one can select the specific pieces of information that they are investigating. This will access specific information regarding strand summaries, standards summaries, item summary, by item, etc. This offers detailed insight into student knowledge (this is also a good time to scrutinize test questions as written based upon student success of failure on specific questions).

If there is a strand that is only being reviewed by a few questions, it is important to be aware that the results may be weak in their indication of mastery (or failure) of that given strand. However, results can very clearly show which standards students have mastered and which they still need to review or have retaught. Through regular formative assessment, instruction can become very focused on student success and ensure that they are mastering all course content.

EADMS allows me to access standard based reports that provide relevant data through multiple analyses. I can see a standard summary of the exams my students took or examine an item analysis, strand summary, or even charts that illustrate student outcomes. I can know what students missed so I can reteach the material or possibly modify the assessment because it had a faulty distractor. I can compare the results of my students to last year’s exam to identify any possible reasons for lower/higher achievement.

This report can help a teacher plan future lessons. It allows the teacher to know which students understand the concepts being taught and are ready to move on. It also allows the teacher to see what students need reteaching and in what specific areas. This allows the teacher to create small groups and target specific skills.

These reports are very useful because they breakdown the students responses to show levels of strength, basic understanding and weaknesses.  This gives the teacher a wealth of information that he/she can use for enrichment, practice and re-teaching.  By having data to help drive your instruction, teachers can provide their students with much more individual focused instruction and richer more meaningful content all while meeting various levels of needs of learning.  Students will benefit  and teacher can very easily access this data through EADMS.