Accuracy of Teacher Judgments of Student Responses to Standardized Test Items

Six students were randomly selected from each of four third-grade and four fifth-grade classes. For each of their six students, teachers were asked to predict whether the student had responded correctly or incorrectly to selected items on a standardized achievement test that recently had been administered in the district. It was found that (a) aggregate measures of teachers' judgments of their students' responses correlated positively and substantially with aggregate measures of students' actual responses; (b) teachers accurately judged their students' responses to individual items for approximately three quarters of the total number of test items; (c) the accuracy of teachers' judgments varied significantly with subtest; (d) there were significant individual differences among teachers in the accuracy of their judgments; and (e) teachers were least accurate in judging low-performing students and most accurate in judging high-performing students. These results are consistent with other research in this area and are discussed within the context of interactive decision making of teachers.