Which type of assessment is not standardized and can vary in administration?

The correct answer is informal assessment. Informal assessments are not standardized, meaning they do not follow a specific set of protocols or norms that dictate how they must be administered or scored. This lack of standardization allows educators and therapists to tailor assessments to the individual learner’s needs, circumstances, and the specific skills being evaluated. Informal assessments might include observations, interviews, or unstructured tasks that provide insight into a student’s comprehension and learning processes.

In contrast, standardized assessments, such as DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), are designed to have uniform procedures for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Summative assessments are typically structured and used to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit, providing a formal measure of what students have learned. Pseudowords, which are often used in literacy assessments to evaluate phonemic awareness and decoding skills, also follow standardized procedures for administration.

This distinction highlights how informal assessments can adapt to different contexts and individual student needs, providing a more flexible approach to evaluating student performance and identifying areas for support.