When selecting an assessment for a school-based evaluation, how do you decide between a norm-referenced test and a curriculum-based, criterion-referenced measure?

• A. Consider purpose (diagnosis vs progress monitoring), population, reliability/validity, classroom relevance, and whether local norms or growth tracking is needed; use a multi-method, multi-source approach.
• B. Reliability is the only factor.
• C. Norm-referenced tests should always be used for diagnosis.
• D. Curriculum-based measures should always be used for progress monitoring.

Answer: (A)

Selecting an assessment in a school-based evaluation hinges on how the data will be used and who the student is. Norm-referenced tests provide a way to see how a student compares to a broader peer group, which is especially useful for diagnostic or eligibility decisions and for understanding relative standing. But they don’t always reflect the specific curriculum a student is learning, and their usefulness can be limited if the normative sample isn’t well matched to the student’s background or if you need sensitive, frequent data to track small gains.

Curriculum-based measures, on the other hand, are tightly aligned with what is being taught. They offer quick, repeated measures that show how a student is progressing within the classroom curriculum, making them ideal for ongoing progress monitoring and for guiding instructional decisions. They’re less informative for broad peer comparison unless you’re also interpreting them with external benchmarks.

The best approach is to weigh multiple factors: the purpose (diagnosis or progress monitoring), the student’s population and whether the measure’s norms are appropriate, the reliability and validity for that student group, how relevant the task content is to what’s being taught in class, and whether you need local norms or growth data over time. Then use a multi-method, multi-source approach to get a complete picture—combining a norm-referenced measure for peer comparison with curriculum-based measures for ongoing progress and instructional relevance.