Explaining Performance Levels and Quick Views

Eduphoria’s Aware allows users to set and view performance levels for local assessments. Users can also view data for performance levels from several imported assessment types. To see how to author local assessments and set performance levels, visit the corresponding articles:

• Options for Creating Assessments
• Setting Performance Levels for Individual Assessments

Scale Types for Aware Assessments

An assessment administered in Aware has three types of score scales:

• Raw Score Scale
• Percent Score Scale
• Performance Level Scale

A raw score scale is the number of points a student earns on a completed test. Each assessment item is worth a number of points, and the raw score reflects the sum of those points. The scale for each test’s raw scores varies by test since the number, weight, and scoring method for each item can be different. It is, therefore, not always helpful to use raw scores when interpreting student performance or progress.

A percent score scale represents the ratio of points earned to points possible on any single test on a 100 point scale. Percent scores are often favored by educators because the scale never varies and are often used in grading. However, percent scores are problematic for interpreting student performance and progress, largely due to the difficulty of interpreting results across a 100 point scale. For this reason, educators often attempt to convert percent scores to ordinal letter grading scales.

Performance level scales are the most effective way to interpret results from local assessments. A performance level scale is ordinal, meaning that each level can be ranked from lowest performing to highest. This type of scale can be standardized across tests or test types, borrowing from the main benefit of percent scales. In Aware, test authors are able to use the precise number of performance levels that are best needed to interpret student performance.

A student earns a performance level when their percent score is greater than or equal to a cut score established for that level. A student earns each performance level that their percent score satisfies, which is generally referred to as the highest performance level earned. The following example shows how the performance level calculations are made.

Performance Levels and Score Cut Points

Aware performance levels are established using percent score cut points. This is due to the variability of “max raw score” from one test to the next. System administrators can establish general default cut scores for Test Types, and test authors can modify these cut scores as they create new assessments. 

Percent scores do not round to the nearest whole number when assigning performance levels. They are meant to be used as general guidelines for test authoring. Once a test is created and the total number of maximum points possible is known, test authors are able to refine the percent cut scores to best convert the results for data analysis. 

Example scenario: Assume an assessment has a max raw score of 24 and a performance level threshold was set at 88%. If a student scored 87.5% (21/24 raw score), Quick Views would show that the performance level set at 88% was not earned.