What is
Norm-Referenced Assessment
Norm-referenced assessment is a type of standardized test that compares students’ performances to one another. Norm-referenced assessments compare a student’s performance to the course median. The “norming process” refers to calculating norm-referenced scores and the “norming group” refers to the group that a student is compared against while a professor assigns grades.
Norm-referenced assessment refers to an assessment that ranks students on a “bell curve” to determine the highest and lowest performing students. This method is used to understand how students’ scores compare to a predefined population with similar experience. For instance, a student’s assessment score could be compared to scores of students who took the same course in previous years.