(International Reading Association, 1999, p. 4). For most teaching purposes (all but outcome evaluation), the best alternative are low-cost, easy to administer tests. Such tests produce timely information to plan lessons and strategies based on the skill level of students, to track reading improvement for individual students, to identify children who are not demonstrating adequate progress, and to improve instruction strategies on time so that at-risk learners do not fall further behind. But in any case, teachers must have training in the assessment strategies they use and feel comfortable with their implementation. Most importantly, any assessment must be instructionally relevant, focused on essential skills, and culturally and linguistically appropriate (Skiba, Simmons, Ritter, Kohler, & Wu, 2003).

In contrast, for most policy-related purposes, group-administered pencil-and-paper tests, such as the one being implemented in Peru by the MINEDU, are far more efficient (McKenna & Stahl, 2003), because they allow greater coverage of the student population under standard testing conditions, and thus offer results that are comparable across schools and regions. Standardized norm-referenced or criterion-referenced tests provide a broad picture of achievement on certain kinds of tasks that are valid indicators of quality of instruction (International Reading Association, 1999). Written tests can also be purposely designed to inform policy decisions. For instance, the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) is policy-oriented, with design and reporting methods determined by the need of governments to draw policy lessons (OECD, 2007).

Based on the four purposes of evaluation discussed before, Table 2 offers a quick summary of the best uses for oral and pencil-and-paper tests in early reading evaluation when it comes to teaching decisions –such as planning lessons, selecting materials, providing remediation assistance, and so on– and policy decisions –such as assigning resources, designing in-service teacher training programs, implementing targeted programs, revising the core curriculum, designing textbooks, and so on.

**Table 2. Summary of best use for oral and standardized pencil-and-paper tests**

|**Purpose**|**Test format**<br>**(administration)**|**Teaching decisions**<br>|**Policy decisions**<br>|
|---|---|---|---|
||**Oral (individual)**|**YES.**Produce timely information on<br>individual students that helps electing<br>instructional materials or methods,<br>forming<br>instructional<br>groups,<br>providing remediation and enrichment,<br>and<br>assessing<br>the<br>need<br>for|**NO.**They are costly and time-<br>consuming to implement on a large<br>scale.<br>**BUT**<br>can<br>produce<br>valuable<br>qualitative information to triangulate<br>with results from larger samples,|
|**Diagnosis**||individualizing instruction.|particularly when diagnosis on early<br>readingskills is needed.|
||**Pencil-and-paper**<br>**(group)**|**NO.**Do not produce results early<br>enough in the school year to inform<br>pedagogical<br>and<br>administrative<br>decisions at the school level.|**YES.**Allow for large-scale testing,<br>produce comparable results. This<br>can be done by comparing schools<br>relative to other schools (NRM) or<br>relative to agoal(CRM).|
|||**YES.**More dependable, discriminate<br>better among low-performers and in|**NO.**Not dependable. Too costly to<br>implement for all schools.|
|**Screening**|**Oral (individual)**|early<br>grades.<br>CRMs<br>are<br>most<br>appropriate because they discriminate<br>better among poor-performers than<br>NRMs.|**BUT**could be implemented in<br>schools that have been already<br>screened, for a better understanding<br>of needs.|

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