An Analysis of Alignment between Secondary School Mathematics Standards and the Assessments 2013 and 2014 of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Lahore Punjab, Pakistan

Alignment between standards and assessments is acknowledged to be the key factor in a standard based education system. In Pakistan, standard based curriculum was adopted for secondary classes for the session 2012-13 onward and this study was conducted to explore the alignment between the secondary school mathematics curriculum and the assessments made by the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Punjab, Pakistan. For this purpose, a web based application called Webb Alignment Tool (WAT) was used to assess the alignment between the secondary school curriculum for mathematics with Assessment tools 2013 and 2014 on four criteria: categorical concurrence, DOK consistency, range of knowledge correspondence and balance of representation. Both the Assessment tools met the criterion of categorical concurrence. However, they could not meet the minimum acceptable level for range of knowledge correspondence. DOK consistency was found acceptable but instead of quality of assessment items it was because 73% of mathematics curriculum was found at DOK level 1, the lowest level.