Leveled Assessments in High School Biology and their Effects on Student Well Being

Abstract

Traditional summative assessments often fail to accurately measure student understanding, limiting meaningful feedback and negatively impacting student confidence, performance, and perceptions of learning. To determine how leveled assessments impact student performance, confidence and perceptions of fairness, students in high school biology were administered a unit test in three leveled versions. Students selected their test version in consultation with the teacher and could opt into a lower-level assessment if they found their selection to be too difficult. Student performance on the leveled assessment led to modest, statistically insignificant student performance compared to a prior traditional assessment. Student confidence increased slightly although students indicated a strong preference for leveled assessments citing agency and appropriate difficulty as positives. This initial study indicates that leveled assessments are a possible way to more accurately measure student performance and give better feedback.